


Roof But No Ceiling

by bellatemple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 09, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Men of Letters, Men of Letters Bunker, Mind alteration, ritual suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 01:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 56,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2047308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Sam in recovery from the trials, Dean finds himself at loose ends, tethered to the bunker and his sick brother and bored out of his mind.  When a ghostly woman in early 20th century clothing walks through his bedroom in the middle of the night, he's mostly just glad to have something to focus on that isn't Sam or Kevin or his search for Cas.  Following her leads deeper into the bunker -- and Men of Letters history -- than he and Sam ever expected to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roof But No Ceiling

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for LJ's spn_j2_bigbang, 2014. Artwork provided by little_jade (see her master post [here](http://jadedworks.livejournal.com/3792.html)), with alpha and beta work by butterflykiki, chiiyo86, missyjack, and caffienekitty. Title comes from a clue to the word game/riddle, "What's behind the green glass doors?"

**Chapter One**

She came through at 3:27 in the morning, a time when Dean was usually asleep, or not home at all. He figured that was why he'd never noticed her before.

She was a stylish woman, he supposed, for her era at least, wearing a long dress with broad, puffy shoulders and an unnaturally narrow waist, and holding a wide-brimmed hat covered in feathers. She glided neatly through the wall of his bedroom, glowing faintly in the dark and flickering at the edges, but Dean didn't bother reaching for a weapon. She wasn't looking at him. She wasn't interacting with anything. 

She was a death echo, maybe the most serene one he'd ever seen. She looked calm, if tired, her lips set and weighed down at the edges by the folds of her bagging cheeks. Her dark hair was streaked here and there with gray and pulled back into a sharp bun at the nape of her neck. She held herself upright and proud as she skirted the edge of his bed, walking a straight path to the corner of his room, and disappeared again through the far wall. Dean jumped up, sending his blanket and topsheet slithering to the floor, and rushed through the door, looking down the hall just in time to see the train of her long skirt swish once as it vanished through the far wall. He checked the wall, then crouched down, feeling along the baseboards and tile, but found nothing out of the ordinary. 

Of course not. She was just a death echo. 

He straightened, looking from the wall outside his room where she must have exited, back to where she'd vanished. 

". . . Huh."

*

"A death echo?"

Sam didn't so much sit as sprawl these days, propped up on his bed by every pillow Dean could find in the entire bunker, barring the single one he used on his own bed. It was probably overkill — the bed was crowded enough with just the massiveness that was Sam in it, much less fifteen musty lumps of down — but it made Dean feel better. Sam breathed, he was conscious about as much as he was asleep these days, and Dean could no longer see the outline of his skull through his skin. Other than making him watery chicken soup, oatmeal, and toast, getting Sam enough pillows to almost get him fully upright was the best Dean could do for him. 

"Yeah," Dean said. He sat half on the bed and half on the nightstand. Thank god for the rounded corners of art deco furnishing. 

"In your room," Sam said.

"No, Sam, I was sleeping in the kitchen again." 

"Look, I'm not saying I don't —" Sam blinked. "Wait, _again?_ "

"Shut up." Dean flicked Sam in the shoulder with his fist. He was a little afraid if he hit him any harder, Sam would bruise. Or die. 

The first few weeks after the angels fell had been rough. He'd almost been ready to call in the cavalry, which considering that pretty much all their friends and allies were dead would have meant either trying to get Charlie and Kevin to work out a hoodoo mojo resurrection spell, or making an open-ended call to the angels that had just hit the earth. Dean didn't much want to think of what a freak show that would have been. Cas aside, the angels had never really come off as big Winchester fans. 

It was only the sheerest of luck — something that a month ago, Dean would have sworn up and down he didn't have — that Sam had managed to pull through the worst of what the trials did to him. Dean had them aimed for the hospital after stuffing Crowley in the trunk and leaving the church, but on a whim had turned instead for the bunker, not able to take the idea of seeing Sam pale and gray against hospital sheets. He'd seen enough of that to last him a lifetime. He'd cursed himself the whole way home, then cursed some more the whole time he was dragging Sam's dead-fucking-weight down the stairs and through the halls to his room. Then, just as Dean had been getting him into position to flop down onto the mattress (memory foam, like Dean wasn't going to treat his brother just as well — better — than he did himself), Sam had started cursing him back, and Dean had just about cried. 

Okay. He'd burst into fucking tears. He'd just had to talk his brother down from a suicide mission and then had watched what he'd thought was his best friend kicking all the angels out of heaven and locking the door behind him. He'd fucking _earned_ bursting into tears. 

"Okay," Sam said. "There's a death echo." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He wasn't really big on endurance right now; even talking sometimes took it out of him. Dean liked to tease that it meant he finally got a break from all of Sam's bitching. Sam just demonstrated that pointed looks didn't take anything out of him at all. "It makes sense. This place is old." 

"So was our new friend from _Little House on the Prairie_ ," Dean agreed. 

"The TV show?" Sam asked. Dean flicked him again, then rolled his eyes when Sam grinned. "I know you're not going to tell me you read the books. So we're talking pioneer era?" 

Dean frowned. "Sort of. Fancy pioneer. She had the hair, but her skirt wasn't really . . . fluffy enough." 

"Well, that narrows it down," Sam said. Dean couldn't quite decide if he was being sarcastic or not. "You could check online, see if you can pinpoint the style." 

"Yeah, or I could get on with my life because she's a _fucking death echo_. It's not like she's going to go all vengeance on our asses." Dean rubbed his fingers together. "No ectoplasm, no residue of any kind. She didn't even ruffle the papers on my desk." 

"You have a desk," Sam marveled. "With actual papers on it." 

"Well, someone has to take up the geek mantle while you're on bed rest." Dean patted Sam's thigh through the four blankets he had draped over his lap (again, probably overkill; the bunker had a pretty robust heating system for a place that hadn't been used since Eisenhower was in office). 

"Seriously, though," Sam said. "You don't think this is a thing, do you?" 

Dean shrugged. "A death echo? Nah." 

"Then why're you telling me about it?" 

"Dunno. I'm bored?" 

Sam huffed a laugh, then coughed into his elbow. Dean tried not to be obvious as he checked Sam's sleeve to see if he'd spat up any blood. It looked clean. He patted him on the thigh again, pleased. "Speaking of. Let's watch a movie, huh? I'll even let you pick which one." 

Sam smiled, a wan expression that was slowly regaining its old sparkle. "Wow. You really are bored." 

"What can I say? There's only so much following harmless dead chicks a guy can do in a day." Dean grabbed the remote from Sam's desk, only an arm's reach across the room from the massive bed. "Gotta give this big screen a test run before we run out of time on the return policy." 

"The secret headquarters doesn't stay very secret if you keep having delivery guys come in and out, Dean." 

"Hey." Dean mock-scowled at him. "Like I'd let Best Buy into our inner sanctum. Kevin and I handled this puppy all by ourselves. Only managed to ding the plaster a couple times doing it, too."

"And apparently release a death echo, while you were at it." 

Dean's scowl went legitimate, his lower lip edging out into what was decidedly _not_ a pout, thank you very much. ". . . Shut up."

*

Sam honestly didn't think much of Dean's death echo. Leave it to Dean to manage to find someone new to occupy himself with, even laying low in an old locked bunker. His half-dead brother wasn't enough entertainment for him. Neither was the half-crazy prophet. Even the half-cured King of Hell couldn't keep the great Dean Winchester from getting bored. He had to end up with a death echo walking through his room.

Well. Maybe he'd lay off the giant purchases, at least. 

Even better, maybe he'd lay off Sam. If Dean didn't stop hovering, Sam was pretty sure he was going to scream. They'd spent enough time living in each other's pockets over the last several years that it took a lot of extra Dean for Sam to start to feel a little stir crazy, but the whole "too weak to get farther than the bathroom twice a day" thing was really making his brother's mother-hen routine hard to take. 

Oh, and there was the part where Sam was kind of pissed at Dean, too. 

He wasn't proud of that. He wasn't proud at all. But honestly, he'd had a low, simmering rage going in regards to Dean since he disappeared fighting Dick Roman. 

Sam had honestly believed Dean was dead. He hadn't been able to handle believing anything else. And, well, he'd always had a little bit of trouble getting past the "anger" stage of grief. Or the "anger" stage of anything else. So, yeah, he was angry. He was angry at Dean for leaving him behind. For taking Cas with him. For letting Sam stew in his own juices for a year and then for _coming back_. He was angry at Dean for being angry at Sam for not getting him back. He was angry that Dean managed to make new friends even in Purgatory, and he was angry at Dean for not telling him about Benny the moment they got back. He was angry at Dean for breaking things up between Sam and Amelia, and he was angry at Dean for wanting to take the trials on himself and leave Sam behind all over again. None of it was even remotely rational, and that made Sam even angrier — that Dean made him feel this way, that Dean couldn't see that he made him feel this way — and in the end, the only thing Sam had been able to do was to turn that anger back on himself, to revel in the idea of it all finally being over, of all the anger burning away under the full force of the trials' cleansing light, of being sucked down into Hell and locked, suspended forever above it, finally completely alone, finally completely useful. 

And now Dean hadn't even let him have that. 

Sam was tired — was completely fucking exhausted — of being angry. He was sucked dry of everything else, stuck on the absurd pile of pillows that Dean had scrounged up for him and dependent on Dean to bring him toast and coffee and the news of what was going on beyond the short stretch of hallway that connected Sam's room to the institutional toilets and open shower room that somehow, miraculously, always had piping hot water. Hell, Dean was probably taking cold showers just to save all the hot for Sam. Which pissed him off. 

At least without the trials cooking Sam's brain, he could hold it all in. He didn't have to let Dean know he was still pissed, that his anger issues were brimming and had been for so _very_ long. So he smiled at his brother, let him hang out on the bed and goad Sam into watching movies and tease him about his choices and look so damned relieved that Sam, bedbound or not, was still breathing and conscious at least part of the time. 

And sometimes, Sam even managed to forgive Dean. When he winced and cheered at the end of an epic cinematic car crash and turned his head to look back at Sam, just the way he used to when they were kids. When, no matter how much he bitched about it, he still brought home jar after jar of Sam's favorite raspberry jelly. 

When Dean was willing to compromise, instead of sacrifice; that was when Sam forgave him. 

Sam smiled back when Dean waggled his eyebrows, not letting it fade until Dean turned back towards the screen. The TV wasn't a bad idea — Dean could watch that while Sam used his laptop to start some research, help work out where Cas ended up, write up some of the things they'd learned from the Men of Letters so far. The demon cure wasn't something they should be keeping to themselves. There were still hunters out there who counted the Winchesters as allies, if not friends, and who would be grateful for any information that might help them stop demons. Actually end them instead of just banishing them, without hurting the hosts. 

If Dean wasn't going to let Sam close Hell for good, the least they could do was help make Hell's wide open status less of an issue for the world at large. 

"You're scowling." 

Sam swallowed a sigh. "I'm thinking, Dean." 

"You're not supposed to be thinking. You're supposed to be resting." 

"It's not something all of us can turn off." Sam shrugged. "And _Faster and Furiouser Seventeen_ just doesn't do it so much for me." 

"This is why I told you to pick." Dean pushed himself up from the sprawl he'd fallen into at the edge of Sam's bed. "You gotta turn that freaky brain of yours off sometimes, Sam, or you'll drive yourself crazy." 

"I thought we had it pretty well established that we're both already nuts." 

"— er, then." Dean smiled. "Crazi _er_."

Sam knew Dean had never been able to see the world his way; he'd never even tried. Dean's brain turned off at the drop of a hat, so naturally, the fact that Sam's didn't must make him crazy. It'd be easier for Sam to forgive Dean for that one if he weren't at least half-sure his brother was right. And there was nothing more infuriating than Dean being right.

*

Dean's plan for dealing with the death echo was to just ignore it. He had enough on his plate to worry about, what with Sam's slow recovery and Kevin's slow retreat into full crazy hermitude. The kid had taken up residence in a small reading room off the main library, and if Dean didn't swing by to remind him how to be a human being every now and then, he was pretty sure Kevin would start quietly collecting his bodily fluids in jars. And that was not to mention the king of Hell — or maybe former king of Hell? — locked up in the dungeon. He didn't need to add a death echo to the list, especially since they were completely harmless. Dean had known that forever, since his dad learned it when Dean was maybe eight and passed it along. Death echoes weren't aware of their surroundings. They didn't interact with those surroundings. The most they did was make the norms shit their pants in terror and call a tabloid.

But they were also pretty fucking rare, ramshackle houses haunted by survivalist, necrophiliac nutjobs aside. And honestly Dean was, in fact, goddamn bored. 

So when he found himself lying awake in his bed at 3:25 that night, he couldn't help but sit up and watch the wall by his dresser, waiting for her to emerge. 

She was punctual, Dean had to give her that. She swept through the wall the moment the clock ticked over to 3:27, both hands holding her large, floofy hat low in front of her. She stood very straight, the kind of posture that had gone out of style the minute women stopped wearing corsets every day, and were it not for the flutter of the front of her long skirt as she kicked it out away from her feet, he'd swear she was gliding rather than walking. 

Dean had seen a lot of death in his time. He'd never seen anyone walk towards it with so much quiet dignity. 

She couldn't have known what was coming for her. He wondered what she thought she was walking to. Church? She looked tired, maybe she was going to bed. Had she been a Woman of Letters? He knew it wasn't completely unheard of, the woman Abaddon possessed was proof of that. Or were her remains squirreled away somewhere in the bunker, part of some old investigation, forgotten when Abaddon took out the old guard? 

Dean stood before the death echo had made it even halfway across the room, stepping quickly across her path to avoid running into her. It wouldn't matter much to her, but direct contact with a spirit, even an echo, was pretty damned unpleasant as a rule. He opened his door, standing half in and half out, and watched as she swept through the second wall and out into the hallway. 

She crossed it at the same angle she'd taken his room, as though she were walking along some long forgotten hallway that ran just barely off angle from this one. She hit the next wall about ten feet further down from Dean's room, the kitchen, if he wasn't mistaken. He rushed down the hall, swinging into the kitchen and nearly colliding with one of the many racks of enameled metal shelves that lined the space, but wasn't in time to catch her. She'd vanished again, though her trajectory should have taken her right through the middle of the old cast iron stove. She'd either turned when he wasn't looking, or met her fate somewhere in the wall. 

Either way, he wasn't going to find out tonight. He went back to his room, ran his hand over the spot where she'd emerged from his wall, then sat down on his bed and lay back to get some sleep. 

What was her name? Was she a Winchester? He and Sam were legacies, maybe they — and Henry — were hers. Had they stirred her up, somehow, by moving into the bunker? Had it really been him and Kevin knocking the TV box into walls? Or had she spent the last fifty years walking through this room every night at 3:27 on the dot? 

Why 3:27? Had the Men of Letters organized watches? They worked with hunters, at times, maybe she was one of them. He could see a hunter walking knowingly into death like that. 

Had she known what was going to happen to her? 

Had she wanted it? 

He couldn't make out his ceiling in the dark of the room — the lack of windows made the dorms in the bunker extremely dark at night — but he could plot the marks and stains on it in his head even without seeing it. He rolled over onto his side, shoving his arms around his single pillow. 

Did she have family? Children? 

A brother? 

_Fuck._

Kevin was still up when Dean gave up and headed for the library; Dean could see the light of the four old bankers' lamps in the little reading room he'd taken over. He leaned in and flashed him a wan smile. "Hey. How's it going?" 

Kevin barely glanced up. "I'm still alive. I remembered to eat dinner and I have a whole pitcher of water here and I promise I'm not pissing into jars." 

"Great." Dean stepped into the room, his hands dug into the pockets of his dressing gown. He took a deep breath, rocking back on his heels as he looked around. "Mind if I join you?" 

Kevin looked up fully then. His eyes had massive circles around them and his hair was growing long again. It stuck out awkwardly to the side; Dean imagined him fisting his hands in it when the tablet work got too frustrating. He looked like he couldn't quite understand what Dean was asking or even the words coming out of his mouth, like he was trying to parse out a foreign language. 

"Yeah," he said at length. "Okay. Grab a chair." 

Dean smiled and pulled a chair in from the main room. "So," he asked, sitting down and leaning his elbows on the table, careful not to shift any of Kevin's notes. "Find anything interesting?"

*

Dean slept through almost as much daylight the next day as Sam did. Once upon a time, he'd have been able to spring up bright and early, even after a night filled with the remnants of the dead and discussions over a document of obscure ways to control or off a supernatural creature.

Apparently, he was getting old. 

"Hey." He leaned in to check on Sam sometime around two in the afternoon. He took a sip of his coffee, then gestured to his brother with the mug. "You up for eating anything?" 

Sam narrowed his eyes groggily at him. "Dude, did you just not bother to get dressed, today?" 

Dean looked down at his outfit: t-shirt, dressing gown, and sure enough, no pants. He looked back up and shrugged. "Guess not." 

Sam sighed, pushing himself a little further upright in his bed than he'd managed for the past few days and holding out one hand as if to shield his eyes from something bright. "Could you go do that, please?" 

Dean looked down again. "What? I'm wearing underwear. You want breakfast or not?" 

"Yeah." Sam licked his lips a little and swung the stretched out hand down to pick up the water glass Dean made sure was always full up at his bedside. "Toast?" 

"Toast," Dean confirmed. "Jelly?" 

"Do we have any of that raspberry stuff left?" 

Dean sighed melodramatically. "Yes. I still don't know why you can't eat grape like a normal person." 

"I like raspberry." 

"Uh huh." Dean took another sip of coffee. "Think you can take anything a little more substantial? We've got eggs, and you could use a little protein." 

Sam grimaced. "Toast," he said. "Maybe I could try some peanut butter." 

"Better than nothing." 

It was their basic morning routine — or early afternoon routine, since Sam was still only managing to be awake for about six or seven hours at a stretch these days, and almost never before noon. Dean would come by when he heard Sam start to stir and offer him breakfast. Sam would dither. Dean would point out that a great hulking behemoth like Sam needed to live off of more than water and the occasional coffee, and Sam would agree — to a point. Dean would take his little victories, like peanut butter as well as jelly on the toast, and then fill Sam in on the gossip of the day, usually something Kevin had found out in his research — or yelled at Dean in frustration over _not_ finding anything in his research — or the continued non-progress in Dean's attempt to figure out what had happened to Castiel. Then they'd spend the next several hours just hanging out, Dean getting as much Sam time in as he could before his brother was too tired to stay upright any more and fell back asleep, leaving Dean to his own devices in the bunker all over again. 

Dean's mornings usually involved checking in on Kevin and Crowley, maybe making a run to the grocery store to make sure they were always stocked up on bread and freaking raspberry jelly, and poking around in the library, trying to get at least an idea of all the different fields the Men of Letters were experts in. This did usually mean that at some point before Sam woke up, Dean put on pants. 

"So." He set the tray with toast and Sam's weak, froofy coffee on the nightstand. "Death echo lady was back last night." 

Sam looked up. "Did she do anything different?" 

"Dude," said Dean. "She's a death echo." 

Sam shook his head, carefully spreading the jelly evenly over the entire surface of one of the slices of toast. "Then why are you bringing her up?" 

Dean shrugged. "I don't know. Dead lady in my room. Sure, she's just an echo, but still: dead lady." 

"You're bored," Sam said. 

"I think that's been pretty firmly established." 

"No." Sam pushed himself even further upright. "I mean, you're _really bored._ You should get out of here. Go find a hunt or something." 

"What, and just leave you here?" 

"I'm fine, Dean." 

Dean looked down at Sam's tray, then back up at Sam. 

"Okay, I'm not fighting fit, yet, but I'm not going to keel over if I have to look after myself for a couple days. Besides, Kevin's here. It's not like I'll be alone." 

"Kevin has barely left his little study room since we got back." 

"So give him something to focus on other than the tablets," Sam said. "We can entertain each other and you can stop going totally stir crazy." 

"I'm not going stir crazy." 

"You're obsessed with a death echo." 

"I'm not obsessed!" Dean stood up and started for the door. Sam made a little squawk of protest. 

"Dude, where are you going?" 

Dean glanced back. "If you're so sick of me, I'll get out of your hair. Yell if you need anything." 

"Dean!" Sam called. "Dean, come on, I wasn't — goddammit, _Dean!_ "

Dean groaned, running his hand over his hair. He wasn't obsessed. Two nights did not equal obsessed. And he totally wasn't going crazy. That was stupid. What, did Sam expect him to start typing "all work and no play" on some typewriter? Maybe show up one morning with an axe? 

Like he'd ever go crazy when he had Sam to look after. 

Obsessed. 

Please.

*

At 3:20 AM, Dean stood in the doorway of the kitchen, all set to catch the death echo as she came through the wall from his room and track her properly.

Okay. Maybe he was a little obsessed.

*

Dean paced.

Watching from the kitchen hadn't helped. The woman definitely disappeared between entering the wall and when she would be entering the kitchen. There was no accompanying noise to her echo, nothing that would hint about a sudden fall or attack somewhere within the wall. She just walked. Calmly. Quietly. Appearing through one wall, going straight through the next, and disappearing somewhere in a third. 

She was _just a death echo_. There was no reason for Dean to be so curious about this. Sure, she was a death echo that went walking through his room every night. The only room he'd had to himself since he was four years old. He could share it with some old dead lady, no problem. And it wasn't like he didn't have other things to think about. 

"Hey." He peered into Kevin's reading room. Kevin raised a hand in a wave without looking up from his notes. "You need anything?" 

"Peace and quiet," Kevin said. Dean huffed and straightened up. He rolled his shoulders and looked around the library. 

He should check on Sam. 

Sam had managed to get his hands on a book somewhere (not from Dean, he knew those things would rot his brother's still healing brain) and had his nose thoroughly burrowed in it. 

"I swear to god, Dean," Sam said before Dean could even open his mouth. "If you come in here and say one word about watching Netflix, I will gut you." 

Dean opened his mouth to rebut. Sam lowered the book far enough to glare at him over it. 

Okay, maybe he'd been spending a little too much time doting on Sam. 

There was still Crowley, right? . . . Yeah, he'd rather pace the library and think about the dead chick. 

He walked a lap around the central table, his fingers trailing over the polished wood, letting them run over the books and papers strewn across it. They glided over the smooth plastic finish of the laptop, then down again onto the table. He paused. It hadn't turned up a damned thing any other time he'd tried, but that didn't mean he might not be able to find Cas _this_ time, right? 

The trouble was, finding people on the internet required a couple of pieces of information that Dean just didn't have. Cas had managed to call once, just after the fall, just long enough to tell Dean that Metatron had pulled a fast one on him and stolen his grace before booting the angels out. The plan had been for Cas to make for the bunker, where he could help Dean look after Sam and figure out what to do about the angels, but Dean hadn't heard word one from him since. If anyone other than Sam had been bedridden and mostly comatose, Dean would have been on the road the next day, trying to hunt Cas down and bring him home. Instead he was stuck here, trying to guess what alias Cas might be using out in the world, where he'd landed, where he might be hiding out — or what hospitals and morgues to call to try and find his dead, human body. 

The US was a big place. Dean had always known that, sure, but it never seemed so big as when he was trying to find just one person in the middle of all of it. At least with his dad, he'd had leads. 

He checked a few of the usual sites: newspapers, big city obituaries, missing persons networks, but didn't find anything. He was tempted to try to contact some of the networks directly, get some people who weren't stuck watching after their invalid brothers on the case, but a former angel was enough of a target to all the nasty crap out in the world without Dean painting a sign on his back. He was stuck. He just had to keep hanging on, hoping Cas would call or show up or just — email him or something. Send a friend request to the Facebook account that Dean had set up in a fit of desperation last week. The one where he had a grand total of three friends: Kevin, the account he'd set up in Sam's name, and Charlie. 

_Charlie._

Dean cursed himself for not thinking of it before and pulled up his email program. She had a tendency not to pick up the phone if she didn't have advance warning anyone was calling, especially if it was one of the many Moondoor weekends, but if she wasn't pretending to be an ancient queen, she'd answer an email in a matter of hours. He rattled off all the pertinent details (most of which she probably already knew, honestly) and added a few pleases to the whole mix for spice before hitting send. 

There. Now he at least felt like he accomplished something. 

Only ten more hours until the death echo would be showing up again.

*

He was determined to sleep through it, this time. He'd quite possibly managed it any number of times before; he and Sam had spent plenty of nights in the bunker — hell, possibly more than they'd spent on the road since they'd found the place last year — and he'd only seen her the first time a few nights ago. Clearly she wasn't that big of a deal. If she were, he'd have noticed and dealt with her already.

If he hadn't let himself sleep in that morning, he might have even managed it. As it was, though he aimed for bed by 2, he was still wide awake by the time the clock hit 3:25, was sitting up facing the wall by 3:27. 

She glided into the room exactly as she had the first night she showed up, glowing faintly blue, her skirt ethereal, her expression serene. Dean stood, pacing along beside her. 

"You're dead," he told her. "You hear me, lady? You're dead. You've probably been dead for a century. You're nothing more than a memory of a memory. The fucking universe passing gas. You're not even rotting any more, you're nothing more than a skeleton somewhere. You're _dead_." She didn't look over or acknowledge him at all. "You're dead!" Dean waved a hand in front of her face, barely snatching it away again before she could walk through it, and watched as she disappeared through the far wall. He jogged out the door and around the corner to follow her down the hallway. 

"Listen to me! You're dead! You're long gone! There's nothing left for you here, you're just bugging the shit out of me, so get the hell out, okay? Move the fuck on!" She was getting close to the far wall again, about to disappear for another night. Dean couldn't do another whole night of this. He swiped at her in frustration, then made a grab for the hat she held low by her side. 

His hands closed on stiff wool felt and velvet that crunched and crumbled beneath his fingers. The woman's head snapped up and she turned, staring down at Dean. 

Dean froze, half-crouched, his hand still gripping the now dusty remains of her hat, caught in her gaze, which struck straight through him, piercing him in a way that no one else could. No one but Sam or Dad, that was — or Mom. He knew that expression, had even seen it in the mirror a time or two. She was a Winchester. Or a Campbell or whatever other names there were in his and Sam's family tree that they'd never gotten to hear because their tree was diseased and dying and fucked to all hell. 

"Come along then, cousin." Her voice was low and smoky, like a golden age starlet's. Her lips curled up just the tiniest bit at the edges as she tipped her head towards the wall. "And I will finally greet my death with a happy heart." 

She started moving before Dean could think what to say in return, tugging her hat free of his grip. He lunged forward as she hit the wall, as though he could wrap his arms around her waist and force her to stay behind, to _explain_ — and his fingers scraped along plaster, grasping at nothing. 

"Oh hell no." He stepped up to the wall and looked it over. He ran his fingers over the scratched and scarred surface, marked by years of passing Men of Letters carrying boxes and umbrellas and who knew what else without worrying about touching up something as simple and innocuous as a hallway wall. And, yeah, by him and Kevin and all the things they'd brought in, too. Rapping a knuckle against it, he heard the faint echo of the hollow spaces between studs. He leaned in close, turning his head and pressing his ear as though he would hear her calling to him from the other side. 

Something caught his eye along the wall, an irregularity just a few hand-spans from where he leaned. A tiny ledge, an infinitesimal shift in the depth of the wall. He slid along, running his hand in front of him, and felt a crack in the plaster. Leaving his hand on it, he stepped back. 

The lights in the hallway were always rather dim, antique incandescents that lit everything well enough to avoid walking into the wall or people, but not enough to make out the perfectly fitted plaster-and-tile door in the wall where Dean was standing. He felt the edge of it with his fingers and confirmed that it was at least as tall as his reach. He pressed in against it, looking for the latch. When that didn't work, he pulled out his knife, slicing a little "X" into the plaster just next to crack to mark his place while he rushed back to his room for a flashlight. 

Under a direct beam, the edges of the door became apparent. It stretched from the last line of tile above the floor to just beneath the ceiling, running about twice the width of the standard gap between modern studs, not quite three feet across. He tried to picture the woman in his head, her actions just before going through the wall, to see if he could remember any sort of latch she might have pressed or catch she triggered, but the door must have been open in her time, because as far as he could remember, she'd just walked on through. 

He should wait till morning. Let Kevin and Sam get a look at this. They'd enjoy the puzzle of a secret passage as much, if not more, than he did. And who knew what could be behind the wall, after so many years? He shouldn't go wandering off in the bunker alone without telling anyone. They'd found enough curse boxes and books of dark magic to know that this place wasn't all sunshine and roses, after all. 

He should totally just go back to bed, come back and look at this again after a good night's sleep. 

He should absolutely not be using his knife to wedge into the crack and pry the door open. 

A blast of stuffy air rushed past him as the door gave under his manipulations, swinging open with a shriek of old hinges. Dean looked up towards Sam's room, waiting to see if the noise woke him up. When Sam didn't make a sound, he turned back to the hole now gaping in the wall and shone his flashlight in. 

"Well, 'cousin'," he muttered. "Looks like I'm coming along, after all." 

The passage looked pretty normal, initially, just an ordinary stretch between the walls, about eight feet long. Old newspaper lined the wood-backed plaster by way of insulation, though it was too smudged to read. A pipe ran through the floor on the right side, jutting into the wall at about the level of Dean's knee. He just barely managed to miss walking into it and hissed under his breath. He aimed the flashlight at the floor in front of him, noting a few more pipes running in and out of the wall ahead. This part of the passage was probably something of an open secret back in Henry's day, at least for whoever did the Men of Letters' plumbing. 

At the end of eight feet the walls abruptly changed, wood and plaster giving way to brick. A metal door spotted with rust and marked with a now-illegible etching blocked his further passage, an old fashioned lock set into it just above the handle. It looked similar to the lock on the front doors of the bunker itself, and Dean almost turned around to go back for the key. Or, hell, to go to bed. All of this really could wait until morning. Sam would just about shit himself to hear they had a real secret passage in the bunker. 

Then his hand closed over the handle, and he pressed down on the latch. It gave beneath his grip with a crack, the bolt apparently rusted through enough to break. 

He wondered if he should be a little bit worried about that. 

The door swung open with another old-hinge shriek and a burst of stale air that sent a shiver over his scalp and down his spine. He found himself looking down worn stone stairs through an arched tunnel that looked more like something he might find under a castle in Europe rather than a warehouse-shaped bunker in Kansas. He had a fleeting moment to wonder if he was going deeper into the Men of Letters' history than he wanted to, but then a flicker of ghost-light far down the tunnel drew his eye. 

The spirit had called him 'cousin'. Men of Letters history was _his_ history, and he had to believe his family line had something better than the Campbell hunters in it. His curiosity was well and truly piqued. Sam wouldn't make it this far down the passage, anyway; he could barely make it down the hallway without getting winded. And Kevin — hell, Kevin was already more than armpit deep in mystery of his own with those tablets. He didn't need a secret sub-basement added on top of all that. 

Dean would just check it out and report back. No big deal. 

He expected the stairs to be slick, worn down into ramps in the middle, but they were flat and solid beneath his feet — which was damned lucky, since whenever this tunnel had been built, it was before handrails were a requirement. Falling down these stairs would suck ass, and he really didn't want to think that his not-a-death-echo ancestor was trying to lead him to his death. 

Unless she was an omen. 

God damn, he hoped she wasn't an omen. It would be just his luck to follow an omen right into his own sticky, probably finally permanent death. And then who would keep Sam from getting all suicidally stupid? 

There, see? Same mission as always. Stay alive until he knew Sam would stay that way, too. Sure, he knew it wasn't the healthiest way to live his life — enough people had pointed that out to him over the years, not the least of all Sam himself — but it worked for him. Living for other people kept him going, and if it wasn't Sam, it was Dad, or Lisa and Ben, or Cas, or even Kevin or Charlie. He didn't let many people in; each person he added just drew the whole living thing out that much further. He'd die for just about anyone, would die for humanity itself if he had to, but living for them? 

That was a whole lot harder. 

"Hey," he called as he came to the bottom of the staircase. His flashlight picked up a wide, empty chamber built in the same brick as the tunnel, the floor covered an inch thick in undisturbed dust. He played the light over the walls, picking out a few archways leading off, dark as pits. There were old gas fixtures in the walls, installed sometime after the chamber had been built, judging by the external piping and the soot stains along the ceiling. The arch was tall enough for him to stand in upright, but reaching up, he could place his full palm against the ceiling without stretching. He felt the weight of the layers of brick and concrete above him. He tried to work out what room in the bunker the chamber ran under, but the dimensions warped in his head, and he couldn't quite place it. A side room of the library, maybe, or one of the storage closets. 

So long as he remembered it wasn't six or ten or however many feet of dirt, he did alright. 

"Hello?" he called again. "Uh, Cousin? You down here?" 

"Things are escalating," a voice said, male, with the precise phrasing of someone who'd trained themselves out of a thick accent. "The tensions between Austria and the Serbs are getting worse, and the Kaiser is anxious to prove his worth. The council fears the old prophecies are coming to pass. They have called for the transfer." 

Dean aimed the flashlight low, feeling behind him for his knife and wishing he'd thought to grab his gun before coming down. He slunk forward towards the archway in the center of the far wall and came up to rest with his shoulder against the bricks, out of sight from anyone who might be inside. Looking carefully around the edge of the arch, he spotted more ghost light, this time from two figures wearing dark suits. One wore a bowler, the other a straw boater. 

"It's as I told you, Richard," the death echo said. Dean leaned a little further and saw her standing just beyond the two men, her hat held low in front of her in both hands. "Though I suppose they must be quite irritated that a woman holds seniority in such a time of crisis." 

"Mary Annabelle," the man who wasn't Richard said, his voice high and tight. "Are you absolutely sure —" 

"My dear William." Mary Annabelle reached for the man in the boater, resting her hand on his cheek. Dean watched him shut his eyes and swallow. "Do you think I would ever leave you, if there were another way?" 

"We must begin immediately." Richard doffed his bowler respectfully. He reached into his jacket and withdrew a long dagger of Roman design, with a spiraled grip and simple, unadorned guard and pommel. The blade looked inscribed, but Dean was too far away to make out what it said, or even the language it was written in. Richard held it tightly, but with uncertainty, glancing once to William, who'd turned his face away. 

"Mary Annabelle Winchester, née Moore, legacy of Arthur Edmond Moore, and senior member of the Men of Letters American Annex." Richard paused, here, frowning and glancing to the side. "Ah —" 

"You could name my sponsor," Mary Annabelle said. "But I suspect that's precise enough identification for the ritual." 

"Yes," Richard said, his faint smile pained as he readjusted his grip on his knife. He cleared his throat and resumed. "Are you prepared?" 

"Very nearly," Mary Annabelle — who was in serious need of a nickname — said, a small smile crossing her lips. "Cousin!" she called, turning her face towards the arch where Dean stood and giving him a hard startle. "I know you're there, cousin, your lantern is far too bright to miss. Come forward, please. We'll require your witness." 

"The hell?" Dean looked behind him, expecting to see another ghost come wafting up. He looked back to find her looking directly at him. Richard and William both turned, but their eyes flicked about, as though looking for something invisible. 

"I'll thank you to leave aside the crass language," Mary Annabelle's eyebrow quirked up. "It's unbecoming of a gentleman and tempting fates besides. I will not have that place spoken of where I am to die."

"Son of a —" Dean cut himself off when her eyebrow quirked higher, followed by the side of her mouth. A full litany of curses continued through his head as his heart rate jacked up a few notches. "Uh, are you talking to me?" 

She nodded once, taking one hand off her hat to gesture him forward. "I welcome your company. Your spirit has traveled a great distance to be here, and I can only assume it bodes well." 

Really? Because Dean was pretty sure it boded the opposite. "Lady." He moved hesitantly forward. Richard and William were still scanning the room, unable to work out who Mary Annabelle was speaking to. "Great, great grand-aunt or whoever you are. I ain't the spirit in this room." 

"That's all a matter of perspective." Mary Annabelle stepped forward between Richard and William, shrugging off their hands when they tried to stop her, and walked right up to Dean, holding out her hat. "If you please," she said, her voice much softer. "I cannot have my William see this, and the ritual requires two witnesses." 

Dean hesitated, his eyes flicking over to William and back. His instincts screamed at him to turn the fuck around and get about fifty gallons of rock salt to drown this whole ritual in, but something else, some quiet, niggling part of his brain insisted he had to see how it ended. 

"You understand," she said. "You are a Winchester, I believe, and a Winchester will understand." 

Dean swallowed. He'd wanted to know more about the legacy Henry had left him — them — and this woman, this long dead, spooky-ass woman who'd walked through his room at least the last four nights in a row — she was family. He took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, okay, I got your back." 

She smiled gently at him, lifting two fingers to her lips. "Please hold my hat." She thrust the thing into Dean's hands before he could refuse, and he found himself trying to juggle his flashlight, his knife, and a giant pile of dusty ostrich feathers that smelled like ectoplasm. "William. You may leave." 

"Mary Annabelle." 

"My dearest William." She ducked her head, not looking back at him, as though she couldn't bring herself to look him in the face again. "You will not deny me my final wish." 

William looked as though he wanted to protest again, but instead closed his mouth, jaw twitching, and nodded. "We will see each other again." His hand clamped down on the brim of his boater. Then he spun on his heel and walked as swiftly from the room as a man could walk without breaking into a jog, moving deeper into the chambers and tunnels.

"No." Mary Annabelle didn't look up at him. "I don't believe we will." 

"Your witness," Richard said, his voice formal, though the dagger trembled in his hands. "His name?" 

"Cousin?" Mary Annabelle asked. 

"Dean," Dean said, and hoped he wouldn't have to go through the whole "legacy of" shebang, too. 

"Dean Winchester," Mary Annabelle answered, seeming satisfied. 

"Deceased?" asked Richard. 

"Hell no." Dean shook his head. "Sorry." 

Mary Annabelle gave him a sharp, knowing look and inclined her head. "Foretold," she said. 

"A temporal imbalance," Richard murmured, looking down at the dagger. "The power required —" 

"It bodes well," Mary Annabelle said, her tone indicating she would brook no argument. "A Winchester in this place, from such distance, it can only mean our work here endures." She turned to face Richard, her arms held towards him, wrists turned up, hands clasped in loose fists. "Now let's get on with it, Richard. Before all three of us die of our age." 

Richard nodded and held the dagger aloft. He spoke a prayer in Latin, a simple one asking for cleansing and forgiveness, then switched into another language, harsher but with a lilting, song-like quality. Something just a few steps removed from modern Hebrew. He looked Mary Annabelle in the eye, then pressed the tip of the knife into the inside of her right elbow, driving it in deep before pulling it down towards her wrist. Mary Annabelle flinched, but didn't cry out, even as her blood poured forth in the hard, rhythmic spurts of severed arteries. Richard swiftly repeated the process on her left arm, then caught her as her knees went out. Dean hissed through his teeth and held himself back from rushing in, reminding himself that what he was watching had already happened, that Mary Annabelle and Richard and William were all long gone. He had no idea what this ritual was, or why he'd been dragged into it, or what the ramifications would be if it were interrupted. 

That didn't make it any easier to watch as a woman in whose features he could see himself and his father and _Sam_ in bleed out on the dusty floor. 

"Be at peace, Mary," Richard said, and Dean bit his tongue to keep from adding _You fucking wish_ outloud. He had no idea if Mary Annabelle could still hear him. "With your blood, the Men of Letters are rechristened. Though war may come, we will not falter. Through death, we will persevere." Mary Annabelle smiled shakily at him, her mouth moving along with his words, though no sound came out. She shuddered in his arms, searching the air. "Dean Winchester." Richard didn't look away from the woman dying in his arms. "Wherever and whenever you are, remember what you witness here tonight. This is the power of your legacy, these are the lengths we'll go to to protect our knowledge. Remem —"

With Mary Annabelle's final breath, they both vanished, leaving Dean standing alone in the cavernous darkness.

**Chapter Two**

Sam knew something had gone weird — not wrong, per se, but not even remotely normal — when he woke up before Dean.

Under most circumstances, that wouldn't be strange at all. But at the moment, Sam slept till mid-afternoon and Dean hadn't slept in that late in years. 

When they were younger, Sam could always tell when their dad had come home from a hunt in the middle of the night because Dean slept in the next morning. He slept in every morning that John was home with them instead of out in the field, in the line of fire. Sam had quickly worked out that Dean only slept that hard, only let himself indulge that way, when he felt safe, when he felt _secure_. He hadn't seen Dean sleep in like this since before their dad died. 

He didn't know what to make of that. He knew Dean saw the bunker as home, but this? This was strange. Either Dean was way more attached to the place than Sam had ever seen him get with anything — including the Impala — or Dean had been moonlighting. 

Sam should have paid more attention to that damned death echo. 

It took him an embarrassingly long time to lever himself up and over to the edge of the bed. Dean would have to have gotten him a king-sized one. Sure, it was pretty much the only bed he didn't feel like he dwarfed since he'd topped six feet, but it still seemed liked an infinite plane of squishiness when his body wasn't working right yet and he wanted to get up in a hurry. It was easier, he knew, once he got past the mattress — firm ground didn't mess with his muscles as much, even if he did have to at least pretend to navigate it upright — but getting there, when the damned memory foam kept trying to suck him back into the perfect, Sam-shaped divot in the middle and _every pillow in the bunker_ was crowded in his way was a bit like trying to run an obstacle course made out of quicksand with his shoelaces tied together. 

At least the door wasn't far. The bed took up pretty much the entire room, and Sam could wrap his hand around the door jamb from a seated position at the bed's edge. It was extremely useful for hauling himself up, and from there he could let the wall hold a good chunk of his weight while he made his way over to Dean's room. 

The bunker seemed to have operated on a skeleton staff in its heyday, so while it was clearly built to house an entire army when the need arose, only a handful of the rooms were actually livable by the time Sam and Dean had gotten there. As a result, there were a whole two rooms between Sam's and Dean's, making it difficult for Sam to make out if Dean's door was open or not. Two rooms had barely seemed like anything when they moved in — the novelty of not having to cram themselves into the same tiny motel room had been so amazing that they'd barely blinked at being separated by maybe 25 feet of hallway. But that 25 feet was practically a marathon from where Sam stood — leaned — precariously. 

He briefly considered just firing a gun into the air. Instead, he leaned harder against the wall, took a deep breath, and bellowed " _DEAN!_ "

There was a crash down the hall, some mildly creative cursing, and then Dean swung out his door in nothing but his shorts, his dressing gown on upside down, his pistol in his fist. 

And a turn of the century ladies' hat on his head. 

Right. That was new. 

"Sam!" Dean waved his pistol in a circle, then squinted down the hall at where Sam leaned. "Dude, what the fuck are you doing out of bed?" 

Sam rolled his eyes. "Wondering where the hell you were." 

Dean squinted harder, then rubbed his eyes. Sam hoped he hadn't slept in that hat. It looked like it had about a century's worth of dust all over it, and that couldn't be good for his brother's eyes. Or respiratory tract. Shit, did this place have asbestos? It was probably totally full of asbestos. Hell, they probably should have done a whole safety inspection before they just moved themselves in. They were used to staying in shitholes, but they were usually only there for a few days at a stretch, not _weeks_. When did people figure out radium poisoning was a thing? 

"I was sleepin'." Dean sounded all of five, and the way he was scrubbing at his eyes with both fists now didn't help. He'd stashed his gun in his shorts, which were dragging rather dangerously down on his hip with the weight of it. "What time 'zit?" 

"Like, 1 PM," Sam said. "What the hell, man? You throw a kegger last night or something?" 

Dean finally stopped rubbing his eyes and blinked his way through a yawn. "Was, uh." He glanced over to the side. Sam followed his gaze automatically, but didn't see anything unusual about the wall he was frowning at. Dean really must've been tired if he was doing the whole looking away when lying thing. "Exploring." He straightened a little, tugging at his drooping waist band and yawned again. "Didn't notice how late it was getting." 

"Uh huh." Sam's mouth curled up in a smirk. "Nice hat." 

Dean frowned, confused, then glanced up and whipped the hat back off his head with a curse. It'd have been funnier if he didn't then stare at it like he was a rube who'd just seen his first ghost. "Yeah," he muttered, turning it slowly in his hand. "It was our cousin's." 

Sam sighed, then heaved himself along the wall in Dean's direction. "Right. Let's get us both some coffee and you can tell me all about it." 

Dean looked up and scowled. "Dude, where do you think you're going?" 

"I'm already out of bed," Sam said. "I'm not even breathing hard, yet. I'm going to the kitchen and I'm going to sit at a table like a real person while you tell me who our 'cousin' is, and how the hell you ended up with her hat." 

"Sam —" 

"No arguing." Sam frowned across the hall at the kitchen, planning his attack, then finally just sort of flung himself at the doorway headlong, sagging down against the far wall with a thump. Dean opened his mouth, hand flung out, then winced and sighed. 

"Fine, Jesus, at least let me help you, okay?" 

"Yeah," Sam agreed. He was, in fact, now starting to feel a little winded. "Okay, we can do that." He stayed where he was until Dean came over and pulled his arm over his shoulder. "Dude. You smell like mothballs and ectoplasm." 

Dean sighed. "Yeah, man. I know."

*

"Okay." Sam curled both his hands around his mug. As much of both hands he could get around it, anyway. His palms fit, but his fingers got all tangled up in each other and he was absolutely observing this because it made more sense than the story Dean had just told him. "So how did you end up _wearing_ the hat?"

Dean shook his head. "Fuck if I know, man, I barely remember getting back out of there." 

"Out of the ancient tunnels," Sam said, just to be absolutely clear. "That you found by following a death echo into a secret passage behind the sink." 

"It opens into the hallway," Dean said. "But yeah, pretty much." 

"Where the _death echo_ ," Sam found it important to emphasize that part, "spoke to you. Directly." 

Dean took a sip of his own coffee. "Mmhm." 

"So you could witness her death. Which was part of some ritual. For the Men of Letters." 

"That's about it." Dean smiled tiredly, giving a little shrug.

"The _death echo_ that shares our last name. Whose maiden name is the same as _my old dead girlfriend's._ "

Dean frowned, looking away, and then up at the ceiling. 

"Dude, you were at her funeral with me, I know you at least heard what her full name was." 

Dean's eyes narrowed. He tilted his head, then nodded and shrugged again. "Hey man, it's not exactly an uncommon name. It's probably a coincidence." 

"Nothing in our lives is coincidental, Dean. Nothing." 

Dean took another long sip of his coffee, then pushed himself up from the table to go get the pot. "Which part is weirding you out, Sammy? The fact that this place was built on a foundation of human sacrifice, or the fact that you almost settled down to make babies with a potential, like, seventh cousin fifteen times removed?" 

"That's not how —" Sam groaned. It was no good trying to get into the technicalities of genealogy with his brother. "I'm trying not to think too much about the human sacrifice thing, actually." 

"She was pretty damned willing," Dean said. "She basically ordered the other dude to do it. Woulda been around 1913-ish, I think. The stuff the one guy was saying definitely sounded world-war-y, and, well." He set the coffee pot down on the table next to the dusty pile of feathers masquerading as ladies' head gear. "Hat." 

"The tunnel you saw might have been an older bunker," Sam mused. "This place is too art deco to have been finished any earlier than, say, 1925." 

"And the old college years rear their ugly head," Dean said. "Or have you been spending your downtime reading up on old timey interior decorating?" 

"It's called 'paying attention', Dean." Sam smirked. It felt _so good_ to be sitting here like this, trading barbs back and forth with his brother about a case, instead of lying on that pile of pillows in his room being tended to and doted upon. Maybe he'd have to try to catch this dead lady some night. It sounded like he might owe her a thank you or two. "Hell, this place was probably designed by Frank Lloyd Wright." 

"Nah, man. Wright woulda stuck a waterfall in the middle of it." Dean smirked back, lifting his coffee mug in a little toast when Sam laughed. "Right, so. Why would World War I make the old Men of Letters perform a sacrifice _here?_ The US didn't even pretend to get into that whole thing until 1917." 

"Yeah, but that didn't mean we were all totally unaffected by what was going on overseas," Sam said. "I mean, yeah, okay, we're pretty far from any coast, so thinking it might affect this area directly is a little weird. We should do some research." 

Dean nodded slowly, looking down into his mug, then clapped his hand on the table and stood up. "Right. I'll hit the books in the library while you go get some rest." 

Sam sat up so hard the room spun. "No. No way, Dean, you are not benching me." 

"Sam —" 

" _No._ You're not the only one going stir crazy in here." He held up a hand before Dean could protest again about his levels of boredom and crazy. "If I don't spend at least a day out of the bed, I'm going to start shooting. You don't have to be able to stand to be able to do damage with a gun." 

Dean heaved a deep sigh, running his hand over the back of his neck. "Fine. But you're sitting at the table. No getting up to look at the stacks. You think you need something, you tell me and I'll get it. And the minute — the _minute_ your eyes start to droop, I am dragging your ass back into that room, you hear me?" 

Sam smiled. "Yeah, man. I hear you." He held up both hands in an 'I surrender' gesture. "I promise not to move an inch from the library chair." 

He didn't say he wouldn't move the chair. Though he was pretty sure he could reach the book stacks from the table anyway.

*

"Maybe you should use a camera, next time." Sam slouched in his chair at one of the library's central tables, poking disconsolately at Dean's laptop. Because, sure, they were saving lots of stolen, cheated, and fraudulent money not having to stay in motels every damn night of their lives, so they could buy things like fancy memory foam mattresses and giant tvs and Dean his own special laptop, but not a nice iPad Air or a Nexus 7 for Sam. Hell, even one of those Windows things they advertised by doing anything _but_ actual work on them would be cool. But noooo.

Huh. Apparently Dean got himself a Facebook account. 

"What?" Dean called from somewhere behind him. Sam had sent him on what was probably a wild goose chase for a World War I era Men of Letters journal. He'd planned to use the distraction to try his "getting his own books without technically leaving his chair" tactic, but the distance from the kitchen to the library was a lot longer than he remembered, and it currently felt like there were lead weights tied to his wrists and ankles. 

"A camera," Sam said again. "When you go down to explore the vaults." 

He imagined he could actually hear Dean's frown as he came up behind him, even before he started to speak. "The 'vaults'?" he asked. "What makes you think I'm going to go back down there?" 

"Uh," Sam said. "I've _met_ you?" He tilted his head back to look at him. "I'm just saying, Dean. It's obvious I'm not going to be able to go down there with you for awhile. But if you bring a decent web camera, I can still see whatever you find." 

Dean slapped a couple of old leather-covered books onto the table and swung into the chair across from Sam. "You kidding me?" he said. "That place has got to be a death trap. Or several death traps. For all I know, Mary Annabelle pulled me into her little ritual so I could be the next human sacrifice." 

Sam frowned and rubbed his chin — mostly to prove to himself that he could still move his fingers. Who knew walking down a hallway could take this much energy? "That's true. Do you remember the precise wording? It'd give us a better idea if this was a one-time kind of deal or one of those renewing rituals." 

He heard Dean sigh. "Not really. But we're coming up on the hundred year anniversary of the archduke getting offed. If we're going with World War I, it wouldn't be a stretch to think it might be coming due." 

Sam frowned harder. Dean had a point, and it wasn't like they'd managed to find a user manual on this place yet. They were pretty much taking it on faith that Mary Annabelle wasn't an omen — or worse. "Maybe we shouldn't have moved in here so fast," he said. "We don't actually really know that much about how this place works." 

"We're legacies," Dean said, almost primly. "Apparently from really far back. This place is like our inheritance." 

"And yet you were just now saying that you think the secret passage behind the kitchen wants to kill you." 

"I didn't —" Dean groaned, picking up the top book of his stack and holding it out to him. "Here. Journal of one Mr. Richard Fisher, undated. She called the guy who offed her 'Richard', might be his. You want me to go all Indiana Jones on the 'vaults' — and yes, I admit it, so do I — then we gotta hit the books first. I don't want to end up in a room full of venomous snakes." 

Sam took the journal, eyeballing the cover. It certainly looked old enough, though it was hard to pin down the precise age of a book just by looking at it. The fore-edge was roughly cut, the pages uneven, and the corners of the hard front and back covers were curled in. There was no dust jacket, and the inlay on the spine and cover just had the name, Richard Fisher, and the Men of Letters symbol. He carefully opened it, noting the lack of book plate or frontispiece, then turned the first few pages. It was handwritten in an old style script and what looked like a mix of short- and longhand styles, the ink faded from black to a purplish brown. 

This was going to take him forever. 

He dragged himself up a bit in his seat, resting the book on the table as he reached a shaky hand out to drag the lamp in the middle of the table a little closer to get more light. When he glanced over, he saw that Dean had already put a pen and a notepad — one they'd lifted from a particularly gaudy themed motel a few months back — next to him. 

Well. At least he wasn't stuck lying in bed trying to keep Dean from figuring out he was watching Downton Abbey anymore.

*

There was a dark spot on the table, maybe two inches from where Sam rested his hand. A black smudge, about the size of a thumbprint, like a smear of engine grease but darker. Graveyard dark. Evil dark. Dean tried to ignore it, flipping through a journal by someone named "Esther Crumpacker" — which, really? — but the rest of the bunker was so _clean_. Sure, Dean had been keeping up with the upkeep of the place in the downtime, clearing up dishes and throwing out old wrappers and things and even occasionally wiping down the surfaces, but he'd barely had to do anything more than that. The main rooms of the place had some kind of dirt repelling aura around them, and frankly, if it meant he didn't have to don an apron and rubber gloves — or whatever you wore to clean things that weren't guns or cars — to make him and Sam feel at home, Dean wasn't complaining.

The smudge was annoying the crap out of him, though. 

Sam must have done it. Somehow, in the last several minutes since making his way from the kitchen to the library, while Dean was in the stacks, Sam must've — well, Dean didn't even want to know what Sam must've done to get something that light-sucking on the otherwise radiant wood table. 

Was it coffee? Dean was pretty sure he was changing the filters on a regular basis, but the old automatic coffee machine in the kitchen was almost beyond even Dean. It had pressure gauges and dials that looked like they belonged on a steam engine. Or a nuclear power plant. He leaned forward a little, more than happy to set Ms. Crumpacker (he was so using that for Sam's next alias) aside for the time being in favor of figuring out what Sam did to his table. 

The smudge sprouted a really unnecessary number of legs and started running straight at Dean.

If anyone other than Sam were around to hear the noise Dean made as he scrabbled out of his chair, hands flinging out as if to shake the phantom feeling of tiny feet from his skin by sheer will alone, Dean would have had to run them through with a scimitar. Which he grabbed. And wielded at the once-again-pristine tabletop like it'd insulted his hunter heritage. 

"Dean?" Sam sat at the table, his hand still sitting right where the _thing_ had been lurking, still at least partially prissy-geeking out over Richard Fisher's journal like he wasn't now at risk of getting plague. 

Wait, no. Plague was rats. Dean really hoped there were no rats. Oh _crap_ , did that thing climb its way out of the vaults?!

"Did you see that?" Dean demanded, sword still raised, though clearly the answer was "no". 

Sam looked around anyway, then gave Dean one of his little headshake-shrugs that said "I didn't tape over Zeppelin IV, I don't know what you're talking about." 

"Fuck!" Dean hissed through his teeth, scanning the floor now, then gently put the scimitar away. "This fucking . . . bug." 

Sam tried not to smirk, at least. Dean had to give him that. "What, like a silverfish? Cockroach?" 

"Like a millipede and a roach did the nasty." Dean shook himself a little even thinking about it. "In Hell." 

Sam nodded. "Okay," he said. "We'll pick up some traps next time we're out." He'd started doing that a couple days ago, talking about grocery shopping like it was something he and Dean did _together_ right now, instead of something Dean did while Sam was sleeping too hard to notice he was gone. 

Dean sighed, running his hand over his head. "Yeah. Whatever." He grunted once, shifted to sit back down, then changed his mind. "I'm going to grab a shower." 

"Good idea." Sam gave Dean a once over, his lips pursed. "Wash the dust from the vaults off." The lip purse went a little wicked at the edges. "But be careful. Bugs love dark, damp places." 

"Hilarious." Dean turned his back on his brother and the room in general and tried to shake the feeling that the bug was still there, watching him. 

"Be sure to check under the toilet seat for spiders." 

Dean flipped him off.

*

"'Don't forget to check under the toilet seat,'" Dean mimicked, stalking down the hallway towards the Men of Letters' giant ass shower room. "Stupid wise-ass piece of —" He rubbed his hands over his head, digging his fingernails into his scalp a little over his ear. Was his skin usually this rough? It itched. His head didn't usually itch.

"Fucking hat, too, probably loaded with evil magic lice or something." He brought his other hand up, scratching hard across the top of his head a few times before forcibly lowering his arms. He didn't have lice. The stupid bug on the table was just freaking him out. 

It wasn't that he had a problem with bugs. He _didn't_. Bugs had their place in the world, just like every other non-supernatural being. It was just that, well, he'd seen locusts eat their way out of a cop's skull before and now there were bugs in the bunker when there hadn't been any bugs there before and he still had dust all up in his sinuses and probably ectoplasm or something, too, and _his head itched_. 

Think about something else. He had to think about something — anything — other than evil lice and locusts in a guy's brain or he was going to freak himself into scratching his own scalp bloody. 

Sam was getting better. Yeah, that was good. He was sitting up — well, mostly — in the library and he'd managed a whole conversation — three of them, even, in a row — without looking like he was going to fall asleep halfway through. He was even feeling up to getting all dickish at Dean about the bug on the table —

Nope. Back that up, skip around it. 

They'd had a little bit of the old back and forth going there for a bit, was all. It was progress — great progress. In another couple weeks, Sam might even be able to walk around the bunker and get his own damned coffee again. 

Okay, and that was depressing for a whole other reason. Not being exhausted by making your own coffee shouldn't have to be a mile marker. Not for Sam. And the fact that it was, that was all on Dean and his stupid issues with hellhounds. 

Oh, and the fact that berating himself for something that pretty much anyone else would say wasn't his fault made him feel better was probably pretty wrong, too. 

Still, he felt calmer as he made it into the shower area. He stripped down — he was still in the dressing gown and shorts, getting dressed in the morning was for suckers — shoved his things into one of the slightly less dusty lockers, and stepped into the first shower stall. He turned on the spray, the heat turned up as far as it would go for as long as he could stand it, and tipped his head down to let the water wash over his hair and his _not_ infested, _totally normal_ scalp. His eyes caught on the shiny white tile and beige grout, and he frowned. This place was cleaner than most motel bathrooms he'd seen. And it wasn't like Dean was busting out the Tilex every day or anything. There wasn't even any mildew. Bugs didn't belong in a place as preternaturally clean as this. 

Maybe they should get a cat. Yeah, 'cause that'd help his sinuses.

He turned around, letting the hot water pound on his neck and shoulders, and watched as the skin where it streamed across his chest flushed, then turned hot pink, before he finally turned the temperature to a more reasonable level. The heat wasn't actually going to help much with the itchy feeling, but it made him feel cleaner, less like the vault was still clinging to him, filmed up over his skin like grease. He let the water run over him for a few more moments before grabbing a bar of soap and getting to work on the actual cleaning. Falling into his usual morning routine was helping, too. Getting dressed in the morning might possibly have its perks. 

He brushed his teeth in the shower, not quite willing to step out from under the warm water just yet, then finally acknowledged that trying to shave there might not be the best plan and, with a sigh, turned the water off. He poked at his wrinkled thumb with his index finger, wobbling the swollen skin around while reaching for a towel with the other hand. 

_Watch out for spiders._

He froze, then snorted, picking up the towel and giving it one firm shake before wrapping it around his waist. 

Fucking Sam. 

The heat from the shower had steamed its way out into the locker room and the bank of sinks and mirrors, fogging everything up. Dean grabbed his razor and a hand towel, bit back a yawn, and wiped a big circle into the mirror, idly considering writing some sort of cryptic message in the condensation for Sam to find when he eventually got around to taking a shower of his own. "Redrum," he growled, wagging his finger as best he could while it was wrapped around his razor. Something weird enough for a quick little twitch from Sam without him actually falling too hard for it. Dean smirked, leaning over to plug in the razor — half expecting, as usual, for the fifties wiring to reject his 21st century appliance and send him flying across the room — and met his eyes in the mirror. Funny, he'd just been thinking about how he couldn't see the outline of Sam's skull under his skin any more, but there was his, clear as day in the antique fluorescents. He leaned in, setting the razor on the counter, and pressed his fingers into his cheekbone, watching the dark skin beneath his eye stretch and flex. 

If the worst he got from his adventure with Mary Annabelle was heavy bags under his eyes, he should probably count himself lucky. 

He turned his head, watching the way shadows played across the line of his jaw, imagining he could see the outlines of his teeth even through the afternoon stubble. He could feel them there, even with his fingers on the sink, was suddenly completely aware of how they rubbed against his lips when he swallowed, of the way the tendons in his jaw worked, the tension of the thin muscles of his scalp at the back of his head. He flexed his hands and felt the metatarsals — or metacarpals — or whatever the fuck hand bones were called — slip against each other, cushioned by cartilage and wrapped in tough, stringy muscle. He watched the pulse in his own neck, felt how it pushed against the skin of his throat, jumping and kicking up a gear or three, so close to the surface. Vulnerable. His windpipe tightened as he tried to suck in more and more air, and part of his mind watched it all, cool as a cucumber even as the rest of him braced for panic. 

He threw around the term "meatsuit" all the time, but he'd never let himself really think about what it meant, about all the bits and pieces that stacked together to form his body. Even when he was injured, even when some of those pieces ended up on the wrong side of his skin. He could feel his bones, all two-hundred-and-whatever of them, working in concert. And he could feel the hot rush of bile rising in the back of his throat. 

He leaned over the sink, both hands (every finger, every joint, all the layers of skin and nerve and meat, like the anatomy of a chicken wing) clenched around its edges. He squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the sight of his own skin, the way the knuckle joints shifted just beneath it. He spat, forced himself to take a deep breath. Told himself to think of something else. Think of anything else. 

_Don't forget to check under the toilet seat for spiders._

Fuck. He guessed that'd have to do.

*

Sam gave himself a few minutes to just sit and chuckle softly after Dean fled the scene of the supposed bug attack. His brother was definitely getting _way_ too into their new living quarters if he was threatening insects with a scimitar. He filed his brother's new fear of creepy crawlies away to use for later teasing — there was just _so much_ ammunition, there — then looked back down at Fisher's journal.

It was written in the usual style for an early 20th century diary, which was to say sparsely. Sam had been surprised when he was younger to discover that the florid language of pre-Hemingway literature didn't extend to personal journals of the era, especially considering how popular epistolary novels could be at the time. He'd fully expected to find pages upon pages of excessively enthusiastic descriptions of everything from garden parties to courtship rituals. Instead, personal writing tended to be terse, and usually primarily concerned with the weather. 

_Feb 4. Clear today, a relief from the snow. Took horses into town for shoeing. Esther asked for more pickled eggs, so stopped at Clive's on way home._ Then there was something about dinner, either "pleasant" or "pheasant", Sam couldn't be sure which. 

It was riveting. Really. 

_Mar 18. Telegram in from CO: transfer timetable moved up. M.A. won't be happy. Still snowing._

Near as Sam could tell, Richard Fisher had been just a lowly manager in a small outpost far from the Men of Letters central command. The names "Esther" and "William" also featured prominently, two other employees at the outpost, and the initials M.A., which had to be an abbreviation for Mary Annabelle. Sam couldn't blame the man; he wouldn't want to have to write that name out long hand over and over, either. Mary Annabelle was at least nominally in charge of what seemed to be primarily a satellite storage facility, with Richard working immediately under her and Esther and William as clerk and handyman, respectively. Though he didn't give their ages, Esther at least came off as quite young; she was constantly making requests for surplus goods and begging rides into town. _There is not much here_ , Richard wrote, _to keep her entertained_. It took time and more than a little imagination, but Sam slowly managed to parse out the narrative of their lives as he skimmed through several years worth of one or two daily sentences. William, for one, featured more and more prominently as time went on, frequently in the same phrase as Mary Annabelle. Sam couldn't help but smile, recognizing the slow progression of an old fashioned courtship. There was something fascinating about watching two of his presumed ancestors slowly falling in love, even through such a dry medium. By the time he read the words _M.A. and William betrothed. Smells like rain coming_ , Sam was utterly charmed. 

Which was why it took Kevin stumbling out of his reading room to make Sam realize just how long Dean was taking with his shower. 

"Oh," Kevin said. He was clutching a mug in one hand, a bowl in the other. "You're up."

"Yep." Sam smiled. "And you're out here. Actually talking to people." 

Kevin looked down at his bowl. "I ran out of cereal." He looked back up, eying the mess of books and papers on the table, then came over to take a look. "What are you researching?" 

"Men of Letters history." Sam marked his place in Fisher's diary and gently closed it. "Dean found a secret passage last night, and we're trying to figure out what the deal is." 

Kevin nodded. "Is that what the shrieking was about?"

Sam blinked. "Uh. No? That was only. . . ." He looked at the clock on Dean's laptop screen and frowned "Half an hour ago. He saw a bug." 

"Oh." Kevin rubbed his forehead. "I thought I slept longer than that." 

"'Sokay," Sam said distractedly, then shook his head. "I mean, no, that's not okay, man, that means you need to actually get real sleep more often. You look worse than I do."

Kevin's eyebrow went up. "I find that hard to believe." He lifted his bowl a little. "I'm going to get cereal. You want anything?" 

"I'm good," Sam said. "But can you see if Dean's in there, maybe messing with the coffee machine or something?" Half an hour was far too long, even for one of Dean's showers. "And if not, make sure he didn't drown himself in the shower?" 

Kevin shrugged blearily. "Whatever, man." He headed into the hallway. Sam listened to his shuffling footsteps. "Ew! Dean, pick your wet towel up off the floor!" 

He smiled when he heard Dean grumble something in return, relieved that his brother was once again accounted for. The whole ritual, secret passage, mysterious history thing had him more on edge than he'd realized. A few moments later, Dean came in, his hair still wet and his skin red and blotchy under the collar of his t-shirt. He frowned over his shoulder at Kevin, then looked back at Sam. 

"Drowned in a shower, Sammy?" he asked. Sam shrugged. Dean rolled his eyes. "You find anything?" 

"Actually, yeah." Sam tapped the cover of the journal. "Pretty sure we've got the right Richard. Seems like this place was just a storage facility before the war. The main headquarters for the Men of Letters was somewhere in Northern Italy, near as I can tell." 

"Huh." Dean sat down, leaning his elbows on the table and folding his hands. "Makes sense. Organization that old wouldn't have started stateside. So the war's probably what drove them over here." 

"At first just the more valuable artifacts and information, yeah." Sam opened the journal and carefully turned the pages, pointing out a few of the entries. "Richard seems like he was something of a curator, managing the collections and keeping inventory. Mary Annabelle was the site director, or whatever the Men of Letters equivalent title would have been." 

"'Need more racks for S.R. 355,'" Dean read. "'M.A. displeased.' M.A., huh? Emmay. I can dig it. She did mention being the 'senior legacy', or some shit. What was with the ritual, then? Why'd they off her if she was so important?" 

Sam shook his head. "I haven't gotten that far, yet. Right now, they're mostly gearing up for Mary Annabelle and William's wedding." 

Dean snorted. "Dude, use Emmay. It's way less of a mouthful." 

Sam rolled his eyes. "Want me to call him 'Billy', too?" 

"Whatever makes you happy." 

"Anyway," Sam said. "There's still years left in this thing for me to go through. It's gonna be a little while before I have all the answers. Maybe you should take a nap." 

Dean looked affronted at the very idea. "I don't need to _nap_ , Sam." 

"Uh huh," Sam said. "I've got about the endurance of a piece of paper and Kevin's practically sleepwalking his way to a bowl of Lucky Charms right now. We might as well make sure someone in this place stays functional. And that means you getting enough sleep not to freak out about _bugs_." 

Dean scowled, one hand going up to scratch above his ear. "Sounds more like what I need to do is go buy more Lucky Charms." He pushed himself to his feet, putting his hands on his lower back as he stretched his shoulders out and up. "You want me to grab you anything in particular?" 

"Lucky Charms sounds okay to me," Sam said. He could press Dean for more information — and get him to get more sleep — later.

*

The trip to the grocery store was, as always, uneventful, though it did remind Dean how important it was to make sure he got out and around, even while he and Sam did their "go to ground and lay low" deal. It didn't do the Impala a lick of good to be sitting around, especially out on the side of a grungy old access road, and honestly, it didn't do him much good, either. He'd spent his whole life out on the road, almost constantly in motion even when he was sitting still.

Maybe that was what this whole thing was, the bug and the hat and everything. His body reacting to inertia, the slow bleed of momentum. 

In honor of Sam making it all the way out to the library that morning, Dean stayed out longer than he would have otherwise, swinging by the liquor store and then sort of window shopping through town. He stopped in the bookstore to pick up a couple of novels for Sam: brainless romances, mostly, because the look on Sam's face when he caught sight of the covers would be priceless and his brother could use some more brainless entertainment these days. And, hey, maybe they could foist some of them off on Kevin while they were at it. _That_ kid pretty much just needed to stare at anything that wasn't carved into ancient stone. In a fit of perverse humor, Dean even picked up a used copy of _Fifty Shades of Grey_ for Crowley. He was just looking through the sci-fi section for something for himself — Sam always gave him funny looks when it came up, but Dean _really did_ read for fun on occasion — when his phone beeped, letting him know he had an incoming call. 

"Yeah, Sammy." 

" _I found some info on the ritual._ " Dean heard the sigh lurking under Sam's voice and smirked. " _And my butt's asleep._ "

Dean used his free hand to pull a mass market paperback off the shelf, eyebrow rising at the obnoxious pink color the publishers had chosen for the title font. What did hot 80s pink have to do with steampunk, anyway? "I will alert the media." 

" _You're not actually going to make me walk all the way back to my room by myself,_ " Sam said, and Dean dropped the book with a curse. He'd totally forgotten he'd left Sam sitting up in the library when he made the grocery run. 

"Get Kevin to help you." He eyed his book stack and then flicked a glance up at the front counter. Was it a weekend? That looked like a weekend kind of line. 

" _Kevin is also asleep._ " 

"Huh." Dean hadn't been 100% sure that Kevin actually still did that. "Okay. Uh, I can finish up here in a sec, be home in about . . . fifteen minutes?" 

" _Are you at a bar?_ " Sam asked, an odd lack of condemnation in his tone. " _It doesn't sound like you're at a bar._ " 

"Nah, man." Dean's hand went for a Philip K. Dick novel almost of its own accord before he reminded himself he didn't have time for weekend lines. "Just . . . looking around." 

Sam was silent for a long moment, and Dean snatched his hand away from the shelf again, wondering if Sam had passed out at the table. Maybe he'd dropped the phone and couldn't pick it up? Shit, fifteen minutes had been a conservative estimate, but it'd still take him at least ten to get all the way back to the bunker, even if he left now — 

" _Take half an hour,_ " Sam said. Dean's shoulders relaxed so fast it actually hurt. " _I can switch chairs._ "

"Yeah?" Dean winced at the hopeful note running under the syllable. 

" _Yeah,_ " Sam said. " _I'm the one who told you to get out more, right? Just, uh._ " There was another pause, not as long, but enough to make Dean's shoulders rise all over again. " _Don't forget the Lucky Charms._ "

Dean shook his head, eyes rolling to the ceiling as he picked up the Philip K. Dick novel, then added the steampunk one on a whim. "Dude. When did I ever forget the Lucky Charms?"

" _Hey, you also never used to freak out over one bug, either. Just playing it safe._ "

"Ha," Dean said. "I'm hanging up." He hit the end button, shaking his head, and slid the phone back into his pocket. He looked up at the line at the counter again. 

Yeah. He had time to look for one more book. He smiled, putting the stack he already had under his arm, and headed for the horror section.

*

"Dude," Sam said, holding up the book, his eyes wide in irritation. "You bought me _It?_ "

"Bugs and clowns, Sammy," Dean answered, stepping around behind Sam to hoist him up out of the chair and start maneuvering him back to bed. "Bugs and clowns." He took his time in the hallway, giving Sam the room he needed to take his own weight if he felt up to it. And, honestly, Sam might've had a point about that nap idea. A headache had started ratcheting up by the time he'd left the bookstore, and if he weren't so anxious to hear what Sam had found out about the ritual, he would've gone straight to bed after depositing Sam in his. 

But he had to know. _Had_ to. He'd never felt this kind of urgency when there wasn't someone actively in danger, before — and "what if I'm next" didn't count. He just . . . needed to know. 

"Alright," he said, taking his usual half-bed, half-nightstand spot and fluffing a few of Sam's extra pillows. "So about the ritual." 

Sam scowled blearily at him. He didn't so much blink as pass out and then immediately kick himself awake. Dean wanted to leave him alone, let him get his rest, but he just kept sitting there, staring at Sam expectantly. It was because she invaded his room, he decided. Emmay made it personal. 

"Right," Sam said, fumbling at the journal he'd brought back with him from the library. "I coulda told you over the phone, you know." 

"I was busy," Dean said. "Come on, cliff notes it." 

"It was, uh." Sam rubbed his forehead and yawned, giving up on finding the page. "A power thing. The headquarters had to have all these spells built into it. Protections. They're powered by sacrifice, the most senior member tied to the site." He looked back up at Dean again, face serious. "She was willing, man, but I'm guessing it was pretty damn grudging." 

"Seniority is through legacy," Dean said, nodding. The details clicked together in his head. "The oldest member with the longest legacy is in charge." 

Sam's sigh was half-laugh. "You're not in charge, Dean." 

Dean's mouth quirked. "Says you. Did it say anything about renewal? Is Emmay going to run out of juice?" 

Sam fought against another yawn and lost. "I dunno, man. We'll figure it out, though. I'm not gonna let anyone start slicing up your arms." 

Dean patted his shoulder and shoved gently against his head. "Yeah. 'Cause you're in shape to stop anyone from doing anything right now." He smiled, careful not to put any sting behind his words. He'd tried so hard to get back to teasing mode with Sam, but some things he still had to navigate carefully. "Get some sleep. We'll figure it out in the morning."

*

Dean called it an early night that night for all of them. He managed to march Kevin out of his little reading room hideaway around 9 PM, sending him to the sparsely made up "guest room" he'd cleaned out when he was setting up his and Sam's rooms last year. He pointed out when they got there that his room was between Kevin's and the library, and if Kevin decided to go back and do more research before at least 8 hours had gone by, Dean would catch him and — well, he'd balked at making any effective threat. Kevin was too busy rolling his eyes like Dean was less scary than his mother to be intimidated and they'd all know it was a lie anyway. Still, Kevin agreed and went into the room and when Dean checked back in on Sam, his brother was firmly passed out, the Fisher journal lying open on his chest.

It was possible that Crowley didn't hit the sack early, but Dean figured he didn't count. He wasn't getting out of the dungeon, or even the chair Dean had chained him to _in_ the dungeon, so he wasn't really worried what the demon would get up to, down there. He was kind of hoping for folding the pages of _Fifty Shades of Grey_ into creatively violent paper dioramas. That'd at least give Dean something interesting to look at when he went to check on Crowley every couple of days. 

As Dean stretched himself out across his bed, his hands folded behind his head, he wondered if Emmay would make a return trip tonight. He knew she wasn't strictly a death echo, but the first couple of nights she'd done a damn fine impression of one, repeating the same steps over and over until someone managed to finally snap her out of it. If she was bound to the bunker, he supposed she could maybe be a bit of both, death echo and traditional spirit, making her final walk over and over until the right person interrupted her. Which meant that she probably wouldn't show — she'd served her purpose, gotten Dean's attention and shown him the way into the vaults where he could witness her sacrifice. 

Unless there was more to show him. Unless he really was meant to make his own sacrifice here for the sake of the dead Men of Letters. 

Unless unless unless. 

He fell asleep without noticing, the last several long nights catching up with him. One moment he was lying awake in bed, going over everything he knew about Emmay and his family history and the Men of Letters and the bunker, and the next he was snapping awake, the bunker so quiet and the air so still that he knew that several hours must have passed. 

Dean didn't startle when he woke up; Dad had trained that instinct out of him early. He woke quiet, taking stock with all his other senses before opening his eyes. Assess the threat. Keep the element of surprise. It was Sam who woke him up as often as it was a threat, after all. It wouldn't do to accidentally attack the one he was meant to be protecting. 

It never took long to work out what woke him. In this case, it was light, specifically the one in the hallway outside his room. The lights here were old and they buzzed when they were switched on. The light in Dean's room was overhead, but what hit his eyelids wasn't bright enough to be that direct. 

Trouble was, Dean never left the door to his room open when he slept. 

He couldn't hear any footsteps in the hall, which meant whoever it was was trying to be quiet, in which case, why switch the light on at all? No, that wasn't it. They were standing still. Judging by the prickling proximity warning along Dean's scalp, they were in his doorway. Watching him. 

So either Kevin had gone weirdly sentimental on Dean, Sam had started sleep walking, or someone else had snuck their way in, someone with only the barest concept of personal space. 

"Cas?" Dean asked softly, eyes flicking open. 

The figure in the doorway wore a dark suit, but otherwise bore no resemblance to Castiel at all. It was too tall, for one, tall enough to have to stoop in the doorway, and it was entirely bald, its skin pale to the point of translucency. Worst of all, though it was hard to tell from the way its head was turned, looking out into the hall, it seemed to be entirely lacking a face. 

Dean never startled when he woke up. He assessed and then he attacked. By the time he had his gun trained on the creature — no more than a fraction of a second later — the thing had vanished, taking the light in the hallway with it, and leaving Dean sitting up in bed, pointing a gun at the darkness.

**Chapter 3**

Sam dragged his own ass out of bed the next day, the second one in a row, figuring half the trick of recovery was just convincing yourself you were okay enough to do the little things, like getting dressed and walking down the hall. As much as the trip to the library the day before had exhausted him, it had also woken him up, and it'd made him feel more human than he had in weeks.

Besides, who knew what Dean had gotten up to the night before after putting Sam to bed. He was probably still asleep himself. 

. . . Or sitting at the table in the library staring into space. He could be doing that, too. 

"What are you doing?" Sam asked. He didn't mean for it to come out sounding so accusatory, but, well. He'd just walked down a hallway. He was tired. 

Dean blinked slowly, like he was more than half-asleep himself, then looked over at Sam. "You're up," he said. 

"Uh, yeah." Sam set Richard's journal down on the table and made his way to the closest chair, lowering himself gingerly into it. "I figured it was good practice." 

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Cool." He turned his head again, still staring into the middle distance. Sam resisted the urge to wave his hand in front of his brother's face. It'd require getting up, after all. 

"Do you have low blood sugar or something?" he tried. 

"What?" Dean looked up sharply this time, a scowl on his face. "No, what the hell?" 

"You're not doing anything," Sam pointed out. 

"And that irritates you, now?" Dean pushed back from the table, getting up to start pacing the length of the library. "I'm just — I'm tired, alright?" 

"Uh huh." Sam couldn't keep the irritation out of his voice. "You went down into the vaults again, didn't you." Into the place _Dean himself_ had said was probably a death trap. Full of ghosts. Without any back up. 

Yeah, that definitely sounded like Dean. At his absolute stupidest. 

"No." Dean practically growled it. "I went to bed, just like I told you." 

"Where you didn't sleep," Sam said. 

Dean rubbed his hand over his head. "I got _some_ sleep. I just — got woken up." 

Sam leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "Did Emmay come back? I figured it was a possibility that she would." 

Dean shook his head. "Nah, man, not that I saw. It was something else. Someone at my door. Something." 

Sam straightened, a crawling sensation running up his spine. "What do you mean, 'something'?" 

"It was, like, seven feet tall," Dean said. "Had the whole angel-suit look, only creepier. Whitest fucking thing I've ever seen. And, uh. It was kind of missing a face." 

Sam frowned. "That sounds familiar." 

Dean shrugged. "You got me." 

Kevin leaned out the doorway into his reading room. "Dude. You saw Slenderman." 

Sam snapped his fingers and reached for Dean's laptop. "That's right!" 

"What the fuck is a 'slenderman'?" Dean asked. Sam held up his finger, giving Dean a "just a sec" glance, and did a quick image search. He turned the laptop around to face Dean. 

"Is this what you saw?" 

Dean glanced from Sam to Kevin, then leaned in and looked at the screen. "I dunno, kinda. Minus the tentacles, anyway." 

Sam nodded. "There are a couple variants. The main details are the suit, the height, and the super pale skin." 

"Only one problem." Kevin tipped his head at Dean. "Slendy is a meme." 

"Okay," Dean said. "One of you two doesn't start explaining — in _English_ — I'm going to punch something." 

"He's made up." Kevin rolled his eyes. "A bunch of people on the Something Awful forums made him up, like, forever ago, and started spreading rumors around the internet. Now there's a bunch of macros, some ARGs, and even a crappy horror game about him." 

"Alternate reality games," Sam offered, seeing the frustration build on his brother's face. Dean had managed to set up a Facebook account, but he was still woefully behind when it came to internet culture. 

"I knew that," Dean huffed. "The thing I saw last night wasn't _made up_."

"Well, the Something Awful people drew on a bunch of archetypes when they came up with the Slenderman story," Sam said. "'Pale man in a suit' is pretty standard modern horror. Just look at the classic vampire narrative. There was even an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a Slenderman type bad guy." 

"It's kind of the Men in Black vibe," Kevin said. "Did either of you make coffee yet?" He didn't wait for an answer, just started towards the kitchen. 

"Well," said Dean. "At least he's socializing." He shook his head. "So, what are we talking here? New legend based on old myths?" 

"Maybe," Sam said. "Only thing you'll find on it on the internet is references to Something Awful and the macros and things. They're pretty proud of making up an enduring ghost story. And it's not the first time we've gone up against something people just made up." 

"Yeah?" Dean leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face with both hands. "And what are the odds that we're dealing with the remains of an old sacrificed relative _and_ a tulpa in the same week?" 

"Without actually going anywhere." Sam sighed. "I don't know what to say, Dean. You say you've seen these things —" 

"Hey, we have solid evidence to back Emmay up." 

Sam raised both hands, surrendering. "I'm not disputing that. Fisher's journal seems to line up perfectly with the details you got from the vaults. But the air down there has got to be full of dust and mold, and you weren't exactly yourself, yesterday." 

"You think I dreamed up an 'internet meme' I've never even heard of." 

Sam sighed. There was no way Dean would accept any of this as an explanation, but it was the most sensible one he was seeing, just now. "No. I think first you went out and bought a giant stack of books and _then_ you dreamed about an internet meme you don't remember ever hearing of." 

Dean stared at him silently. Sam held his gaze, momentarily wishing he was still at least a little psychic. Then maybe he could project how much sense this made directly into his brother's head. 

"I'd better go help Kevin with the coffee machine." Dean stood, walking past Sam into the hallway without a backwards glance. 

Yeah. That had gone well.

*

Dean made it almost all the way to the kitchen before he was sure Sam wouldn't be listening for his footsteps, tracking his progress and his excuse for getting the hell out of the library. He stopped to lean up against the wall, running his hands over his face and then up into his hair.

He hated it when Sam had a point. 

Had he encountered the Slenderman story online before? Yeah, probably. They came across all kinds of stuff, most of it pure crap, when they did their research online. He didn't consciously remember most of the details, but it wouldn't be the first time he'd managed to connect dots based on random things he read looking for something else. It was entirely possible he'd conjured up the thing in some kind of lack-of-sleep, psychedelic-mold induced nightmare. 

And then there was the bug on the table, and that weird-ass trip or whatever in the bathroom. Maybe it was the vaults. Maybe it was being cooped up, all the time, when he'd spent so much of his life on the move. He'd been okay when he was out yesterday, so much so that he'd put off coming back until Sam called to complain. 

He tipped his head back against the wall, looking across at the scratches his knife had made on the plaster when he pried the secret door open. It was closed again, had been since the morning after he'd found the thing, and were it not for the knife marks, he might even believe it was never there. 

It was, though. There were the marks and if Dean squinted, he could make out the crack between the door and the regular wall. And anyway Emmay was real; Sam had found her in the journal. He hadn't accidentally read _that_ without noticing. 

Right? 

Okay. It was simple. If he was going stir crazy, if this was just about him spending so much time in the bunker with just Sam and Kevin for company, nothing to do but watch Netflix and worry about his brother — then he needed to leave. Sam wasn't at death's door any more. He was improving every day. He'd be fine without Dean hovering for a few days. Dean could find himself a nice, simple local hunt, go off himself an angry spirit, maybe pick up a chick at a bar, blow off some steam, and then he could come back fresh. No hallucinations, no nightmares. 

If it was the vaults, though. . . .

Dean going down there might have stirred up more than dust. The possible hallucinations, fucking _Slenderman_ — the Men of Letters wouldn't have sealed off the area willy-nilly, that didn't make any sense. Suppose they'd locked something in. Who knew what might be leaking out around the edges now if the seal was broken. If that was the case, he _had_ to stay here. Sam was getting better, but he was in no fit shape to fight off even a simple spirit, much less whatever had the Men of Letters scared enough to wall it up like something out of Poe. And Kevin knew some tricks, but he was no hunter. 

Dean needed more information. He was going to have to go back into those vaults.

*

The dungeon sat suspiciously silent as Dean walked up. Over the last few weeks, Crowley had gone through a couple different reactions to his incarceration: loud berating, incessant chain rattling, a good solid block of incoherent rambling. Dean had half expected to walk up to the sound of singing or something equally ridiculous.

The silence was unnerving. Of course, that very well might've been the point. 

Dean swung open the shelves that served as the dungeon doors, prepared for just about anything he might find on the other side, up to and including Crowley simply _not being there_. He hadn't thought to include 'Crowley is reading' on that list, though. 

"You know," Crowley said, licking his finger and turning the page of his paperback without looking up at Dean. "This Grey fellow has some very interesting ideas about temptation." 

"Wow," Dean said. "You really are evil." 

The edge of Crowley's mouth twitched up, then he heaved a sigh, folded down the corner of his page, and set the book down face first, splayed open with the spine firmly creased. Dean twitched. Sam would have a fit if he saw it. Which, again, was probably the point. 

"Squirrel." Crowley's lip lifted into a small sneer. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" 

Dean smirked back. "Field trip." 

The sneer vanished, replaced by bemused concern. "Where?" 

"Not far," Dean assured him, circling around the table to grab Crowley by the back of his metal collar. "You're going to be my canary." 

He didn't look down to see Crowley's expression as he yanked the demon to his feet and started dragging him, chains and all, towards the doors of the dungeon, but he couldn't help but feel rather pleased with the consternation and alarm he pictured flickering across it. The chains caught up on something as they went, but Dean just reached back and yanked, tugging them free again and resuming the frog-march.

What was the point of having the King of Hell locked up in chains, after all, if you couldn't use him a little?

*

Dean stormed into the library, a doubled over Crowley under one arm. If Sam had had the energy, he would have shot to his feet and yelled. "Dude!" he hissed instead. "What the hell?!"

"Do you have one?" Dean asked, his face tight and blank the way it got when Dean got his absolute worst, most terrifying ideas. 

Sam shook his head, sliding his chair back a little and bracing himself to stand. "One _what?_ " 

"A camera. One you can watch the feed from live on your computer." 

Crowley raised one chained hand. "This isn't a kinky sex thing, is it?" Dean shook him like a cat subduing its prey, and Crowley fell silent again. 

"You're bringing Crowley down to the vaults?" 

"He's going to lead the way," Dean said, face still cold. 

"No, really," Crowley said. "You boys are both lovely in your own way, but I'm not interested in —" This time, Dean grabbed Crowley's thinning hair in a fist and dragged his head up, even as his other arm held the rest of him in the same doubled over position. 

"Shut up." Dean let his head go. Crowley sighed and obeyed. "Canary, Sam." Dean turned around and started heading back to the hallway. Sam scrambled to his feet as best he could to follow, realizing that Dean was abandoning the idea of the webcam already. 

"Dean, wait!" He was panting before he even managed to turn the corner, leaning heavily against the wall as he went. Dean had stopped just outside his own room, looking up at the wall with his jaw clenched. "You can't just go running down there with _Crowley!_ " 

Dean looked over. Sam could do with never seeing that particular brand of _blank_ on his brother's face again. "Why the hell not? Anything kills him, we know for sure it's dangerous." 

Sam huffed, resisting the urge to yank at his own hair in frustration. "He's a _demon_ , Dean. Death traps for him might not even _work_ on you. And the place is probably warded up, anyway." 

Dean looked at him, frowning, then down at Crowley, then at the wall. 

". . . We could still try it." 

"Listen to your brother!" Crowley yelled. "He makes some very interesting points!" 

Sam held his breath. Dean stared at the wall, his arm tightening around Crowley's shoulders — then the wind seemed to rush back out of him, though his expression hadn't changed. 

"Fine." He yanked Crowley around and started towards the dungeon. "I'll pick up a web camera at Best Buy tomorrow and go in alone." 

"Dean," Sam tried. "You don't have to. We can wait until I'm healed up a little more, go down together." 

Dean looked back at him, and for a moment, Sam could see terror flashing in his brother's eyes before he locked it down again. "I do," he said. "And we can't." He started towards the dungeon at a pace too fast for Sam to match, effectively ending the conversation. 

Sam cursed him thoroughly under his breath as he hauled himself into the kitchen, the nearest room with seating that wasn't Dean's bed. Dean probably wouldn't have minded, but his room seemed like sacred territory now, a threshold Sam didn't dare cross under any but the most dire of circumstances. Maybe this was why they'd never taken separate rooms before, though they'd had the opportunity a few times over the years. This together-but-apart business didn't work for them. 

And, fuck, what did it say that a few walls and a stretch of hallway was too much distance? Of course Dean ended up fucked in the head. Sam was going to have to keep a closer eye on him now, force himself to get up and around more and make sure Dean didn't do anything suicidally stupid. The idea hurt, his chest seizing up, and for the life of him, Sam couldn't work out if it was because he was still so tired, still so damaged from the aborted trials — or if part of him really just didn't mind any more if Dean died. 

After all, Dean being dead was pretty much the only way he'd let Sam die, too.

*

If Dean got into his car, right now, he couldn't be certain he'd ever come back.

That simple fact was the only thing stopping him from hitting the road and driving. 

The air in the bunker had started to _itch_. He couldn't blame it on the dust or bugs or any too-hot showers any more. It felt like the place was attacking him on a cellular level. The insides of his arms tingled and screamed, and he could feel the skin over his cheekbones tightening. His legs twitched every time he sat down, and so he was stuck pacing again, through the halls to the library and out into the front room, where he'd stop at the foot of the stairs to the door and shut his eyes, squeezing them tight and asking himself _could he leave?_

And when the answer came up _California's only a couple days from here_ , he'd open his eyes, shove his hands in his pockets, and start the circuit all over again. 

Sam, who'd started spending all his waking hours in the library instead of his bed where he should be resting, looked like he wanted to rip Dean's toenails out and use them to nail his feet to the floor. 

"Knock it off, Dean."

"Yeah, yeah." Dean grabbed the back of one of the chairs and made it halfway through a swing into the seat before he aborted and stood back up. The bunker was enormous, with more rooms than they'd even managed to properly catalog yet, but it felt tight around him, clean and dark and _contained_. They had a crisis on their hands, a whole unknown danger lurking under their very feet, and Dean couldn't go work on it for exactly the same reason he couldn't just get into the Impala and drive until he ran out of land. 

Someone had to be here for Sam. 

And besides, this was his home, or at least, it was supposed to be. He'd _nested_. These were his rooms, his halls, his freaking air, and he wasn't about to let a goddamn ghost and her creepy vaults take it all from him. 

"Dean." 

He could feel the weight of Sam's gaze on the back of his neck. "Yeah," he said again, and promised himself he'd at least make a change in his route. Instead of turning into the hall, he went straight, through the archway that led into the strangest and least preserved room of the bunker, the one Sam liked to call the "observatory". 

It wasn't a large room, but it was tall, the floor level with the library, the ceiling with the ground outside and made entirely of heavy iron struts and panes of glass. The whole thing formed a dome through which you could see the whole sky, horizon to horizon — or, at least, that's what Dean assumed it did originally, back when the bunker was in regular use by those who knew enough about the sky to bother looking at it. The intervening years had brought new growth to the area just above the bunker, and now trees blocked the horizon line on three sides, with brush and ivy covering the fourth. The glass was dingy, more than half covered in mud, but intact, though the hinges that allowed it to be opened in the middle had rusted not-entirely shut, allowing a few vines to force their way in. 

To enter the room, you had to step around what Dean was pretty sure was probably a top of the line fancy telescope back in Henry's day. It seemed like a pretty stupid place to store the thing, especially when it was at least twenty feet straight up to get it into position to do anyone any good. There was an elevator — which Dean was pretty sure was ugly and outdated even in Henry's time — that went from floor to ceiling, and a set of cast iron stairs and catwalks to match those just inside the front door, circling up to the very top of the room. Dean wasn't a fan of it up there, at least not standing. Looking past the railing gave him a _Vertigo_ effect, like the floor had been attached to a damn spring. A spinning head would be the least of his problems today, though, and he took the stairs two at a time, making it to the middle catwalk in a few long strides and jogging the whole half-circle to the next set of stairs without once looking down. 

The top catwalk circled the perimeter the same way the middle one did, but in addition stretched across the room to a central platform, where even Sam could stand comfortably with the telescope at his side — so long as he moved the vines out of the way first. Dean stepped out onto the cross piece without a second thought, barely registering the creaks and complaints of the old metal. He closed his eyes as he made it under the cracked open dome, feeling a rush of cool, clear air on his face and letting it wash through his nose and down into his lungs. It smelled like rain. He could feel the vines dangling around him, a welcome reminder that the world wasn't entirely constructed of concrete, metal, and polished wood.

He hadn't realized just how much he missed _windows_. 

"Dean!" Sam wasn't in the library anymore; he must have followed when Dean changed his path. From the sound of it, he was by the telescope at the entrance. He didn't sound out of breath, though, and Dean counted that as a victory. Maybe he should invite Sam up. They could test out the elevator, so he didn't have to climb. The fresh air would do him good. Sam had to be going even crazier than Dean was, stuck inside the bunker for weeks without even the grocery runs to clear his head and give him space. 

"Sammy." Dean let the faint breeze tickle his face for a moment longer before opening his eyes. "You should — _Jesus fuck!_ "

It was a face right out of _The Twilight Zone_ , terror at goddamn ground level, if _The Twilight Zone_ had had room in its budget for more than a fur suit and too much eyeliner. The thing on the other side of the glass was fanged like a baboon and at least three times as ugly, but Dean didn't have much time to register more than _teeth_ before his back hit the railing and he had to throw all his concentration into not falling 20 feet to the hard tiled floor like an asshole. 

" _Dean!_ " Sam yelled it that time, and yep, there he went, struggling up the steps when there was a perfectly good elevator right the fuck there, and oh yeah, _a fucking monkey from Hell_ ready to climb in through the window. Dean wondered when, exactly, his brother had lost all sense of self-preservation and why he hadn't noticed the moment it happened. 

Or maybe Sam had never had any, and all those years of promising Dean he wasn't going to let himself get killed had been a lie. 

"Dean." Sam's voice was calmer now, and yeah, definitely out of breath. He was on the top catwalk, propped against the outer wall under one of the big, reassuring bolts that held it up, instead of clinging to a railing dangling from chains like a suspension bridge. "What . . . the hell . . . man? Are you —" He broke off, swallowing as he tried to catch his breath. "— okay?" 

Dean closed his eyes, trying to shrug off the vertigo that was in full effect again now, thanks. He took a breath and assessed. He was lying on the catwalk floor, hunched up on his side where he'd landed as his knees gave out, probably exactly what had saved him from going totally ass over teakettle. His right hand was clamped so hard around the lower rung of the railing that he suspected he'd lose a layer of skin letting go of the damn thing. His left arm was wrapped around the edge of the floor like he was trying to give the platform a hug. 

Most importantly, though, he wasn't falling. Or being ravaged by a hellmonkey. 

The platform creaked beneath him and he grabbed on tighter. 

"Easy," Sam said. "It's just me, Dean. Come on, look at me. We need to get you down from here." 

Dean hissed through his teeth. He wasn't some spooked cat that needed to be talked down from a tree, dammit. "I got it." He slowly pulled his left arm back up around the edge of the platform, then shifted his weight, rolling from his hip onto his stomach and inching his way along, sliding his hand along the railing as he went. 

He wasn't crawling. He was just keeping his center of gravity low. 

"Okay," Sam said, sounding nonplussed. "Almost there, man. Just keep moving." 

Dean made it to his knees as the platform grew more solid beneath him, shaking Sam off when he reached over to help. "Weapon," he said. 

Sam shook his head. "You can't kill _height_ , Dean." 

Dean would have rolled his eyes, but he was pretty sure he'd lose his lunch if he tried. "Not that, the _thing_. On the dome." 

"Thing?" Sam looked over Dean's shoulder and frowned. Dean turned back to look himself. 

The glass was grungy, stained orange and brown, but unshadowed. There was nothing there, not even a suspiciously shaped smudge of dirt. Something curdled low in Dean's gut. 

"Never mind." He shook Sam off again and heading for the stairs, not even thinking to lend Sam a hand in getting back down.

This had gone past ridiculous. He couldn't live this way, jumping at shadows and hallucinations all around him. It was official, now: the bunker — his _home_ — had turned on him. 

And he didn't have a damned clue what to do about it.

*

Sam let Dean get as far as the bottom of the stairs, then cornered him.

Okay, so it was less "let him get" than "didn't catch up with him until he got". Sam's legs felt like overstretched rubberbands by the time he made it, leaning most of his weight on the railing and almost sliding down each step, back to solid ground. He did manage to grab Dean's arm as he went by on his new favorite pacing route, stopping him in his tracks by pure "don't hurt Sammy" instinct. 

As an unspoken rule, they didn't throw their weight around physically with each other. Not anymore. They'd learned, or were learning, to fight with words instead, to throw speeches at each other instead of punches. Neither of them could throw the first punch at the other these days and know when to stop. These weren't ordinary circumstances any more, though. Dean wasn't just being cagey, he was downright insane. And, well, if Sam was perfectly honest, he wouldn't be able to throw more than one punch just now, anyway. He could block a door, though. And he could still wrap his hand around Dean's wrist and pull. Dean still thought Sam was so fragile that he didn't even resist when Sam led him back into the library and pushed him at a chair. He tried to get up once, but Sam didn't move out of the way. He leaned his weight against the table in front of Dean's chair, folding his arms over his chest. 

"Sam," Dean said in one of his famous "I'm so very dangerous" growls, which he should know by now that Sam was completely immune to. "What the hell?" 

"No," Sam said, hoping his legs would hold out long enough to get through at least this conversation without pitching him to the floor. "That's my line." 

Dean's brows furrowed, his eyes flicking away a moment before he shook his head. The moron was actually _not sure_ what Sam was talking about. 

"You're _sick_ , Dean." Sam poured all his exasperation and exhaustion into his voice. If he saw how much this was bugging him, how much effort Sam was having to waste trying to keep him reigned in, maybe Dean would start listening and fix himself, already. 

No such luck. Dean scowled. "I am not." 

"You have ghost sickness," Sam said. " _Again._ " 

Dean tried to stand up. Sam used his foot this time, knocking the toe of his boot into Dean's chest too lightly to be called a kick, and then propping it on the edge of the chair between Dean's legs to make him stay there. If he leaned forward just now, he was probably going to collapse. 

Dean stared at Sam's knee like it had personally betrayed him. "This is ridiculous, Sam. I'm not _ghost sick_." 

"Uh huh." Sam nudged Dean's right thigh. "Roll up your sleeve." 

"Stop kicking me," Dean said. 

"No. Roll up your sleeve." 

Dean stared up at him. Sam raised his eyebrows and stared back. Dean sneered, then yanked the buttons of his cuff open and started folding it back, not breaking eye contact. Sam smirked. 

"There. You see?" Sam nodded down to Dean's wrist. Dean scowled, then finally followed his gaze to the four rough, red lines he'd scratched into the inside of his forearm, just short of breaking the skin. He'd been fussing at his arms all day. 

"Remember Luther Garland?" Sam asked, tempering his tone. "Colorado?" 

Dean touched the edge of one of the scratches and opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of whatever he was going to say, instead yanking his sleeve back down to cover them again. "It's dry in here. It's making me itch." He shrugged, sinking a little further into himself. "We just — need a humidifier or something." 

"What we need is to find Mary Annabelle and take her out," Sam said. "This is a slower burn than last time — it's already been more than two days since you first encountered her — but there's no telling how much time you have left. Other than Slenderman and the bug, what've you seen? What was in the observatory?" 

Dean shook his head. "That's not what this is." Sam scoffed and he scowled harder. "It's _not_ , Sam. Don't you think I remember that shit? I'm not 'infected with fear'. If that was it, I'd be shitting myself 'cause it's dark."

That . . . was a fair point. And Dean hadn't even wanted to go into their hotel room because it was too high up. He'd never have managed to get all the way to the top of a rickety iron platform in that state. "You're not arguing about the hallucinations," Sam noted. 

"No. I'm not." Dean leaned back in the chair, folding his arms to match Sam's. "I've been seeing shit. But it's not shit that _talks_ to me. It's not telling me what a terrible person I am or taunting me that I'm going to die. It's just —" He raised one hand to rub at his eyes, the other still wrapped around his chest. "— flashes. Of freaky shit. All over the bunker." 

"That's why you're suddenly itching to go back in the vaults." Sam tipped his head, looking at Dean's covered wrists again. "Literally." 

Dean's fingers froze where they were fussing once again, this time rubbing through his sleeve. He scowled and tucked both hands into his armpits. "That's where this started. Emmay's real. We've got proof of that in the journals. She was a person, she lived here, and she died here. She was a fucking hero." 

Sam bristled at that, at the sheer hypocrisy. An ancestor who sacrificed her life for a secret organization of — let's face it — librarians was a hero, but Sam wasn't allowed to do the same for _the entire world_. He swallowed it down for the time being. He could throw that speech at Dean after his brother stopped trying to scratch through his arms and fling himself off of balconies. 

"I still think this is ghost sickness." Sam held up a hand to stop Dean's protest. "It might not be the same as last time, but it's a different ghost. We can't rule it out." And Sam couldn't let Dean go down under the bunker alone. Not when the first time had led to all of this. "Give me one more day, okay? One day, without you deciding to drag Crowley — or god forbid _Kevin_ — down a secret passage. Without you pacing around here like a caged animal or running away to buy whatever gadget the guys at Best Buy have convinced you you need next. Okay? Can you do that?" 

He was pretty sure Dean couldn't, actually. His brother was already twitching, just being forced to sit still. It was exhausting to watch. 

"Yeah," Dean said finally. "Fine, whatever, one day. Can I get up, now?" 

"Are you going to climb the walls?" Sam asked. 

"No," Dean said. "But you're about to fall over. And I wanna get the EMF meter." He shook his head. "We shoulda swept this place from the start, anyway, and it'll give me something to burn off all this 'caged animal' energy." 

Sam nodded. It was a good idea, and it might give them more insight into what was happening. He wasn't sure why they hadn't done it before, either. They'd been too distracted by, well, everything else about the place, he supposed. The library, and the weapons, and the sheer astonishing novelty of owning a _place_. He lowered his foot to the floor and tried not to sway as he straightened up from his lean. "You see anything else unusual, _anything at all_ , you tell me, okay? I need as much info on this as I can get." 

"Yeah, sure, first thing." Dean waved Sam off, bolting to his feet. Just watching him do it made Sam dizzy. "Now stop fussing at me. Only one of us here is an invalid." 

Sam let Dean grab him and steer him into the chair. It was only fair, and he secretly appreciated his brother's stability, since his own was still shot to hell. 

"I'm an invalid," he agreed. "And you're insane, and we're living in a potentially haunted underground bunker. What could possibly go wrong?"

*

Dean had to turn the volume of the EMF meter off in the first five minutes of sweeping the bunker. He could kick himself for not doing a sweep of the place the minute he and Sam moved in, so he'd have some idea if this kind of response was normal. _Every single thing_ read at least yellow, from the front room and the library to the shooting range and the _garage_ , which he hadn't even known they had. He actually went back across the whole complex to get Kevin and make him confirm that the garage was real, and not just a really, really big hallucination.

"Congratulations," Kevin said. "You have a bunch of really old cars." He leaned over, looking at the lights on the top of the EMF meter. "Really haunted, really old cars. Can I go back to the library, now?" 

"If it was a room full of —" fuck, what was Kevin into? All Dean knew about him was pretty much 'prophet, protect at all costs'. He was a terrible person. "— Really old violins, I bet you'd get excited." 

Kevin just stared at him. He was pale, unshaven, and the dark circles under his eyes were working towards becoming concentric. "It's cute how you think I get excited by things anymore." He shoved his hands in his pockets and started back down the hall towards the library. Dean watched him go, his chest aching. 

Kevin was just a kid. He should've been in school somewhere, skipping classes and almost flunking out because he didn't have his mom looking over his shoulder anymore. His mom should be out there to worry about him flunking and to yell at him until he got his ass in gear again and — and this was what Dean did to people. He tore them apart at the seams and remade them in his own, obsessed, fucked up image, just like his dad had done to him. 

And that was just if he managed not to get them killed outright. 

He looked down at the EMF meter, still flashing a solid yellow even as he pointed it at a mint green, finned Chevy. He turned it around and pointed it at himself. The lights didn't change.

Either the entire bunker was filled with mid-level spooky shit, the vault under them was actually a secret hydroelectric plant, or Sam was right and he really was infected by Emmay. 

And honestly, at this point, he'd believe any of those. 

He started back to the library at a fast walk, keeping an eye on the meter as he went. It spiked briefly when he went past the storage room that hid the dungeon — made sense, there was probably some kind of woogy shit to go along with the devil's trap and chains — another at the central computer hub — maybe from the old vacuum tubes? He didn't know enough about forties and fifties electronics to be sure — and a final one in the hall outside his room, right where the passage to the vaults opened up. He stared down at the meter as he walked the last twenty or so feet to the entrance to the library, as the lights slowly ticked back down to yellow alert again — and sucked in his breath and froze when his foot hit the library threshold. 

He'd just walked out into the universe. 

The archway seemed to hang in space, with only a short platform in front of it to separate it from the void. There was no floor. No walls, no table, no books, no ceiling, and most importantly, _no Sam_. The space wasn't empty, though, far from it: it was scattered with stars, bright sparks and spheres of light in all shapes and sizes, slipping slowly around the door like he was looking out the observation deck windows of the Enterprise at impulse speed. His stomach lurched at the immensity of it, and he grabbed onto the archway and clung, expecting at any moment for whatever barrier was keeping the air in to burst, for him to get sucked out into the vastness, less than a mote, less than a molecule in the grand, astonishing scheme of the universe. 

This was what Death had tried to tell him, the first time they met. He was nothing. Meaningless. The itch in his arms, the slightly musty air on his face, the hollowness that ate through his entire chest — _nothing_. 

The stars spun faster as his knees gave out. Strange, but for a moment it seemed like the stars were calling his name.

**Chapter Four**

Sam didn't even have the energy to yell when Dean fell over. Much less jump up and catch him, though his legs twitched as the impulse to do just that ran through him. That was alright, Dean swooned like a southern belle, catching his own weight on the door jam with his hip and shoulder and sliding just so, never hitting his head on a damn thing. It was like watching some kind of antebellum melodrama.

Dean had _always_ relied on the kindness of strangers. 

Sam bit back a snicker, even as he cursed himself. That wasn't even an antebellum piece, though Blanche had the soul of a plantation heroine. He tried to banish the mental image of Dean throwing himself into the arms of a young Marlon Brando. Or an old Marlon Brando. Or, you know, _anyone._ "Dean." He raised his voice a hair, wondering what he should do if his brother didn't answer. "Hey. Dean!" 

"Shut up," Dean said. He'd managed to turn the swoon into a sit, his knees pulled up, his palms now pressed against his eyes. "Not a _word_ out of you." 

Sam let himself smirk. If Dean was embarrassed, then he couldn't be in bad shape. "What was it this time?" 

"Nothing." Dean lowered his hands, letting them dangle as he rested his arms on his knees. "Not a goddamn thing." It wasn't a denial. Dean actually sounded like he was telling the truth. 

It was kind of disturbing. 

"If you need a hand up," Sam said, feeling all heart, "you're kind of SOL. My legs are still jelly after those stairs." 

Dean tipped his head back to rest against the wall behind him. "And to think, we're the team that saved the world." He closed his eyes and shook from the shoulders up. "More than once." 

"I'd say we should retire," Sam said. "But then this place is fucked." 

Dean opened one eye and peered at him. Sam didn't get to hear what he thought of retirement, though, because just at that moment, the impossible happened. 

Someone knocked on the door. 

"I am _not_ answering that!" Kevin called. Dean continued to peer at Sam. Sam resisted the urge to flick him off. The knock came again. 

"Yeah, yeah." Dean heaved himself — none too steadily, Sam noticed — to his feet. Another knock. "Alright already, I'm coming!" 

Sam didn't have the heart to remind him the door was too thick for his voice to carry. He twisted a little in his seat to watch Dean climb the stairs and open the door. 

"'Sup, bitches?" Sam caught a glimpse of a pair of denim-clad arms wrapping around Dean's neck. Dean managed to only flail a little. "Wow, you look like crap." 

"Hi, Charlie," Dean said. Sam wasn't sure anyone else would catch the pleased note underlying the exhaustion in his voice. Whatever he'd seen in the library, it had cut the floor right out from under Dean's energy and stamina. 

Then Dean stiffened, and Sam nearly forced himself to get up. 

"Cas." 

The reverence in that one probably rang through loud and clear for everyone. 

"Hello, Dean." 

"Told you I'd find him," Charlie said. "It only took a few hacks into security cameras around where he made the call, some creative extrapolation of where he logically would have gone next, and the teeeeniest little extra magic boost." She held up her hand. "Don't worry, Cas already yelled at me." 

"I didn't yell," Cas said. Charlie shrugged. 

"Lectured, then." She leaned over the railing and waved. "Hi, Sam! You also look like crap." 

Sam summoned a smile in return. "You should have seen me a week ago."

"Wait," said Dean. "You did a _spell?_ "

"I already lectured her," Cas said. 

Charlie came down the stairs, leaving Dean and Cas to their awkward reunion at the door. "So I've heard," she told Sam, ignoring the two at the top of the stairs. She walked up behind Sam, slipping her arms over his shoulders and giving him a gentle little squeeze. Sam reached up to awkwardly hug her back. "For the record? As cool as no more demons would have been, I am firmly on team Hurray-Sam's-Not-Dead." 

Something melted in Sam's chest that he hadn't even realized was frozen. "Uh," he said. "Thanks. Me too, I guess." 

"Uh huh." Charlie straightened up a little, staring down at him from over his head. "We'll work on that enthusiasm." She kissed him on the forehead, then straightened up all the way, stepping away from Sam's hand with a final pat to his shoulders. "What's all this? Researching the great Angel Fall of 2013?" 

Right. That. "Uh, no," Sam admitted. "Dean and I kind of got . . . sidetracked." 

"'Esther Crumpacker,'" Charlie read, picking up the journal Dean had been spending his time with — when he wasn't hallucinating and running around like a crazy person, anyway. "Now there's a hell of a name." 

"She worked here," Sam said. "Back around World War I. Dean found something weird, down in the vaults under the bunker." 

"You have vaults." Charlie set the book aside. "Of course you have vaults. You have a shooting range and a war room straight out of _Doctor Strangelove_." She picked up the Richard Fisher journal, flipping a few pages. "I'm holding out until you find a swimming pool." 

Sam felt a twinge in his cheek. It took him a moment to realize it was just from _smiling_. "It's probably under the gymnasium," he said. 

"Retractable floor." Charlie snapped her fingers and winked at him. "Very 1940s." 

At the top of the stairs, the door eased shut with a ponderous groan. Sam looked up, noticing that Dean and Cas weren't on the inside of it. He idly wondered if they planned to run away together, then noticed the red umbrella Charlie had left leaning against the end of the stairs. 

Ah. Nope. Dean was just going out to cry in the rain. Okay, then. 

"So," Charlie said, hopping slightly to perch on the end of the table above Sam. "I know why _you're_ half-dead. What's up with your brother? It's like he's slowly sucking his own health out to feed it to you." She grimaced. "Which, ew. Also, probably not a great plan." 

"I wouldn't put it past him," Sam said. In fact, now that she'd thought of it, he was going to have to hunt down any possible trace of such a spell in the library and hide it. It was _exactly_ the kind of dumbass shit Dean would get himself into. "But no, I don't think so. He's sick." 

Charlie picked her hand up off the library table and quietly rubbed it on her jeans. "With what, the flu?" 

Sam smiled. "Ghost sickness. It's flu-like. Fever, rapid heart beat, increasingly disturbing hallucinations that either convince you to off yourself or eventually give you a fatal heart attack." 

Charlie's eyes went wide. She wiped both hands on her jeans, this time. "Oh. Good thing I wandered into the middle of that, then." 

"It's okay. It only infects assholes." 

Charlie nodded slowly. "You're in a mood," she said. "How long have you two been squirrelled away down here, exactly?" 

"The entire history of time," said Sam. "Plus three weeks."

*

The air outside the bunker was not so much humid or even damp as actively wet, though as far as Dean could tell, it wasn't actually raining at the moment. It was dark; the sun had set sometime between his little adventure in the observatory and Cas and Charlie's arrival, and the cloud cover blocked the moon and stars from view.

Which was just fine with Dean, really. Though it did make it hard to see anything but Cas, standing his usual far-too-close in front of him. 

Cas's shoulders looked small without the boxy shape of his trenchcoat; his dark hoodie was speckled with wet black drips, and his hair lay flat over his forehead. He barely looked a thing like the avenging creature Dean had first met in that barn with Bobby, lifetimes ago. He looked exhausted, diminished, and Dean wanted to wrap him up in a blanket and just _hold on_ until he could bear the weight of the world again. Until they all could. 

"Cas," he said. It was almost the only thing he'd managed to get out of his mouth since he opened the door. 

The smile that twisted the edges of Cas's mouth just made him look all the more lost. "Hello, Dean." 

Anger exploded through Dean, radiating out through cracks in his chest and setting his nerve endings on fire. He heaved a breath hard through his teeth, trying to keep from leaking. "Where the hell have you been, man?" 

Cas was quiet a moment too long, but Dean bit his lip. If he interrupted him now, he'd never get the answers he needed. "Everywhere. Not as far as I could go before, but it took — so much longer." Cas shook his head. "Even having observed you for so long, I had not idea how limited these bodies — humanity — can be." 

That wasn't the answer Dean wanted at all. 

"You couldn't fucking _call?_ " He grabbed onto Cas's shoulders, torn between shaking him and pulling him into a hard hug. "You knew where we were. I told you we came back here, that I had to keep Sam safe and I couldn't come get you. _You knew I was here,_ and I — I had no idea — I didn't even know if you were alive!" 

The old Cas would have tilted his head, baffled even after all this time at the overwhelming force of human emotion. This Cas blinked, and Dean couldn't tell if the wet spots on his face were tears or the returning rain. The noise of raindrops seemed to echo on the dead leaves and road debris scattered across the verge around them. Neither Dean nor Cas made a sound themselves. He was about to be soaked, but Dean couldn't bring himself to care. 

"I'm sorry, Dean." Cas shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, somehow managing to make himself even smaller. "You weren't the only one looking for me. The other angels — they're angry. They would have used you and Sam to try to get to me, and with the two of you stuck here, vulnerable —" 

He cut off when Dean backed off, wrapping his arms around himself and tucking his hands into his armpits. A part of Dean — the part that had never learned how to deal with all the loss and pain and fear without lashing out — really wanted to hit Cas, and that might just break both of them.

"Of _course_ they want to use us," he said. "They always want to use us. That's what started this whole goddamn thing, Cas, _we're tools_." He turned and walked towards the door, only to turn and start back. It seemed like all he did these days was pace. "You get in trouble, you call me."

Cas stood stock still, eyes wide and melancholy as he watched Dean pace. "I'll remember that from now on." 

Dean nodded, keeping his hands tucked away. He ducked his head, looking around. Charlie's car, a 1960s MG bright enough that it practically glowed in the dark, was pulled up just behind the Impala. He should let her pull it into the garage while she was here. Get it out of the damp. He thought of the cracked open skylight in the observatory and how the rain and humidity must be eating away at the cast iron catwalk. There was nothing keeping it from the library, either, no doors, no climate controls — the books were going to mold if he didn't do anything to fix that. 

He wondered when he started worrying about moldy books. 

"We should get back inside." The words seeped out slowly. He didn't want to go back in. He didn't want any more of the hallucinations or the paranoia or the fear. But suddenly part of him _needed_ to. He had to check the skylight, make sure it wasn't leaking too much. He had to check the books. 

"Charlie was looking forward to talking to you," Cas said. "You sent her after me." 

"Someone had to look for you." Dean shrugged, forcing himself to relax his arms. "She volunteered." 

Cas did tilt his head, then, his shoulders lifting a little and rolling back, the closest Dean had seen him to puffing out his chest when he wasn't in full on warrior of God mode. "Thank you," he said, and Dean found a smile somewhere deep inside him. 

"Any time," he said. "I will always find a way to find you, Cas. Always."

*

Dean and Cas were soaked when they came back in. Sam thought perversely that Dean must have planned it that way, so he and Charlie wouldn't be able to see if he'd cried. Cas stuck close behind Dean, only maybe a half step from stepping on his heels, but for once, Dean didn't seem to mind.

Charlie met Dean at the bottom of the stairs, sticking her EMF meter in his face. Dean reared back, brows pulling together, and peered over her head towards Sam. Sam shrugged back, leaning a little to get a look at the meter himself.

"Huh." Charlie waved the EMF in the air and turned back towards Sam. "No increase. Whatever's setting it off in here, it's not Dean." 

Dean shot Sam another look at that, this one smug. Sam sighed. "That still doesn't mean —" 

"Yeah, Sam, it kinda does." Dean stepped around Charlie, heading back for the library. Cas paused at the bottom of the stairs, leaning over towards Charlie, apparently asking what the EMF was all about, judging by the way she waved it around again as she responded. 

Sam braced himself against the arms of his chair, all set to shoo Dean away from the antique books until he managed to dry off, but Dean veered wide around the table, keeping his arms close to his sides to keep from brushing against anything as he went past. "Come on, Cas," he said, and Cas perked up, jogging a little to catch up. "Let's get you some dry clothes, then get you guys some rooms. Charlie, Sam caught you up?" 

Charlie switched off her EMF meter, still in the archway between the front room and the library. "Uh, yeah, I think so." 

"Good," Dean said, and Sam saw him dredge up a smile as he half turned at the entrance to the hallway. "I'm glad you're here. All of you. But we're not doing a sleepover all-nighter, here. I'm wiped, Sam's barely functional. We can do the whole war room conferencing in the morning." 

And then he was gone, into the hallway without so much as a glance at Sam. Cas paused in the doorway and gave Sam a small grin. 

"I'm glad to see you're okay." 

"Yeah," Sam said, smiling back. "You, too." He flapped both hands at him. "Now shoo. You're going to drip on the books." 

Cas nodded, pulling his arms closer to his body with a self-consciousness Sam had never seen in him before, and started down the hallway after Dean. Sam sighed, sinking deeper into the chair — and suddenly realized he had to get his own ass up and back to his room. After weeks of being waited on hand and foot, to the point of actual hatred and resentment, the sudden loss of consideration from Dean was jarring, if not entirely unwelcome. 

"Wow," Charlie said. "You and Dean are really pretty sick of each other, huh?" 

"Guess so." Sam reached out a hand and grasped the edge of the table, swallowing and bracing himself for the task of standing up. 

It almost even worked. 

"Uh, can you give me a hand?" he asked, not quite willing to look up and look Charlie in the eye. 

"Oh! Right, geez, yeah, Sam, of course." She babbled a few more reassurances as her hands wrapped gently but firmly around his forearm and she tugged back, balancing herself against his weight as he slowly got to his feet. Even her slight frame seemed strong in comparison to himself, and he flinched internally. 

If Dean had just let him die, he wouldn't have to be doing this. He wouldn't have to ask a woman less than half his size to be his crutch. He wouldn't be tired all the time, his bones wouldn't constantly ache, and he wouldn't have to worry about what weird shit his brother was going to hallucinate next. 

Sam definitely wasn't ready to forgive Dean for that. He wasn't certain he ever would be.

*

The whole 'exhausted but not sleeping' deal could go fuck itself. Dean rolled over in his bed for the fifteen thousandth time, bunching and rebunching the pillow. These were 800 thread count sheets, dammit. The saleslady had assured him that they couldn't _possibly_ be scratchy or uncomfortable. And yet here he was: scratchy and uncomfortable. Of course, he was a stubborn son of a bitch, too, as everyone always liked to remind him, so his first plan was to wait his own body out. If he lay there long enough, then he had to eventually fall asleep. His head was throbbing and his stomach was hanging out on the cliff-edge of nauseous, all sure signs that his old-ass body was getting ready to just give out on him if he didn't get at least a nap in. Sleep was an inevitability. He just had to lie here and be ready for it when it came.

Yeah. Sure. Any minute, now. 

At 10 PM he threw all his sheets and blankets to the floor, the bed too hot and stuffy to sleep in. At 10:30, he dragged them back up and wrapped the top sheet around him like a cocoon. 

At midnight he tried counting sheep. 

At 12:54 AM he downloaded one of those crappy white noise apps that promised "increased alpha waves for a more fulfilling sleep". He even managed to find one with a car engine noise, figuring if nothing else, he could pretend he was a kid again, lying in the backseat of the Impala, with nothing to worry about but what he was going to tell Sammy when he asked why the sky was blue or why rabbits had fluffy tails. 

At 2 he gave up and headed for the library. 

"Oh, hey!" Charlie looked up from the book-fort she'd apparently spent the last few hours building. "You still look like crap." 

"Gosh," Dean said, eyebrow up and arms folded. "Thanks." He nodded to the fort. "Little light reading?" 

Charlie shrugged, looking sheepish. "None of this Men of Letters stuff is available online, so I have to go old school. And I like to cross-reference. Which reminds me, where did you find these journals? I tried to see if I could find the next volume of Esther's, but it's like the Dewey Decimal System took too much acid and had a nervous breakdown in there." 

Dean frowned. "Esther's . . . that way." He pointed to the stacks behind her. "Third row down on the right, second shelf from the top. In the middle, between the apocryphal gospels and the real predictions of Nostradamus." 

"Okay." Charlie blinked. "That's . . . very specific. Where's Mary Annabelle's?" 

Dean shook his head. "Don't have that one. It went missing not long after she died." 

Charlie stood up slowly, making Dean frown harder. She was looking at him like she expected him to fly off the rails at any moment. "Dean," she said. "Maybe you should sit down." 

"I'm fine, Charlie." 

"Okay." She nodded, giving him a bright smile, even as her eyes remained concerned. "But I know actual librarians who don't know their own collections that well, and it's honestly kinda spooky, so I'd really rather if you sat down and turned back into Dean, now." 

Dean sat. Slowly, so as not to spook her further. It wasn't because he needed to, or anything. "We've been down here pretty much 24/7 for weeks," he said. "I've had time to look around." 

"Uh huh. But you've spent most of that playing Facebook games and catching up on twenty seasons of Top Gear." Dean scowled, and she shrugged at his laptop, still in its customary place on the central library table. "Your password is 'Sammy', spelled with a 4 instead of an A. It's like you _wanted_ me to break into your laptop." 

"I've been meaning to change it," Dean grumbled. He had. Frank had taught him a thing or two about cyber security as well as surveillance. It was just the first thing he'd thought of, and he hadn't gotten around to changing it. "It's not like I ever take it out of the bunker or anything." 

Charlie nodded along. "Okay, now we're getting off topic." She said it in the same way one might tell a small child that they weren't going to eat crayons any more. "So how long have you had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Men of Letters book collection?" 

Dean bristled. "I don't have —" 

"What was the last acquisition for the year 1947?" 

" _Thunderbirds of America_. John James Audubon's lesser known folio of native North American supernatural birds." He pointed behind him without looking. "Back corner, with Darwin's _Bestiary_." 

"And this isn't even a little bit spooky to you?" Charlie asked. 

Dean narrowed his eyes. He folded his arms, opening his mouth, then closed it and bit his lip. He glanced back at the shelves behind him, then back at her. "Yeah. Okay, it's pretty weird." 

She had a point. Several, actually. Dean just couldn't bring himself to get riled up about it. Probably a sleep deprivation thing. 

He'd just keep telling himself that. 

"Well, the good news is, I'm really pretty sure you don't have ghost sickness. Unless nerdiness is infectious."

"I'm not a nerd!" 

"I know." Charlie leaned forward to pat Dean on the forearm. "You're used to just being a geek." 

"I'm not —" 

"You can name the top five grossing female porn stars of the last ten years." 

Dean quirked a smile. "So can you." 

"Well, duh. But I can't tell you the drummers of the best 80s metal bands. That's what geekiness is, Dean. Crazy in-depth knowledge of a handful of very specific topics."

Dean rubbed his forehead. This conversation had done absolutely nothing to help the headache that'd been threatening since he'd gone not-space-walking earlier. Weirdly, though, listing off books in the library _had_. "Why did you want Esther's second journal?" 

Charlie smiled. "I have a theory. Richard just refers to Esther as a clerk, right? All he ever says about her is that she's having a hard time fitting in, and always wants him to pick up snacks or let her go into town." 

Dean shrugged. "I dunno, sure. That's what Sam said." 

"But if you read Esther's journals themselves. . . ." Charlie picked up the journal Dean had pretended to flip through the first day after his trip into the vaults, before the bug attacked. She held it up for Dean to see and he leaned in, then shook his head. He was too tired to be translating old-timey girl handwriting. 

"It just looks like gibberish, to me." He took the book from Charlie and angled it towards the light to get a better look. "It's — wait, is that _cuneiform?_ " 

"Uh huh." Charlie looked far too excited by this. "And other parts look like archaic Latin or old Norse. I can't read a single word of it." 

Dean closed the book and tossed it onto the table. "Then why the hell do you want to see a whole 'nother volume of this crap?" 

"Because I think I know who can." Charlie grinned. "Dean, I think Esther was a prophet."

*

Dean wasn't super sure how talk of prophets and "super librarian powerz" — Charlie's term, of course, and you could actually _hear_ the Z on the end of "powers" — turned into both of them sitting up on Dean's bed at 3:15, waiting to see if Emmay would come through the wall again. He'd actually avoided checking for her the last couple of nights, heading for the library if he found himself awake after 3, though he couldn't have told anyone exactly why. Charlie was gung ho, though, and had an ability to talk Dean into things that even Sam couldn't always match.

If she'd actually been born his little sister, he would have been completely screwed. 

"Okay." Charlie leaned her shoulder against Dean's and spread her hands in the air in front of them. "So, like, you're Emmay, right? All leader-y and imbued with super librarian powerz." 

"Can't we call it something else?" Dean tried. 

"Like what?" Charlie lowered her hands and looked at Dean expectantly until he was forced to admit defeat. "Uh huh. That's what I thought." She put her hands back up. "You're Emmay, and Kevin is totally Esther, and Sam's Richard, with the whole taking everything super seriously and sacrificing for the cause. And you're all here at the same time, and the bunker, like, recognizes your essence or something and kickstarts itself into gear to make you guys _real_ Persons of Letters." 

"Persons of Letters." 

"We're being gender-inclusive. It's not your ancestors' faults that they lived in very backwards times, but we can't let tradition stand in the way of progress."

Dean pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. At least it was dimmer in here than it was in the library. "Okay. But you're missing someone. Unless you're going to tell me Crowley is William." 

"Okay, so there are holes in my theory," Charlie admitted. "It's a work in progress." She nudged her shoulder harder into his. "Is there anyone you're hoping would be your William?"

"What?" Dean scowled at her. She batted her eyelashes. He should have known it wouldn't work. "Are you asking if I have a crush? What are we, in seventh grade?" 

"That is about the last time I had a platonic sleepover." Charlie shrugged, smiling. "It's Castiel, right? He's pretty cute for a guy, and it wouldn't even be interspecies dating any more." 

Dean leaned away from her shoulder and almost fell sideways off the bed. "I'm not — _what?_ " 

"Okay," Charlie said easily. "Though you should know, you're disappointing a lot of fans. Ever since Carver Edlund's unpublished works were released online, a whole war got started between the Wincest and Destiel shippers." 

There were times when Dean really wished he could salt and burn the internet. 

"Oh no," he said, voice dry and flat as Death Valley. "I'd hate to disappoint the fans." 

Charlie laughed and fell blessedly silent. For a whole thirty seconds. "You should try to find one, though." 

"A fan?" 

"A _William_. You and Sam are stuck way too hard on each other. You keep this up and one of you is going to end up busting into the bathroom with an axe." 

"Yeah, because taking care of my injured brother ten minutes from town is totally just like wintering at the Overlook." 

Charlie's face had gone all serious, and she wrung her hands in her lap. "I'm serious, Dean. Remember the whole Djinn video game nightmare thing? You have to learn how to let go. Which, for you, might start with attaching yourself like a creepy human barnacle to someone other than Sam, first, instead of going cold turkey." 

"You're basically telling me to treat a girlfriend like a methadone clinic." 

"Sometimes you're so screwed up, there just aren't any healthy options left." 

Dean opened his mouth to respond — with absolutely no idea what was going to come out of his mouth when he did — when the overhead light dimmed with an angry buzz. He glanced over at his clock. 

3:27, on the nose. 

"Ooo," Charlie whispered, sitting up and looking around. "Where does she come out from?" 

Dean tapped her shoulder and pointed. Emmay was already halfway into the room, just as she'd done all the times before he'd grabbed for her hat. He wondered if she was really set in her ways, or just messing with him. 

She didn't look like she'd changed, at first glance. She still walked straight and slow through his bedroom, her shoulders back and her head held high. She still wore the same slightly poofy shirt and long skirt, her hair pulled back into the same bun. The most obvious change was her hat. Though her hands were still curled as though clutching its brim, the hat itself was missing. Or, rather, it was sitting on a shelf out in the library, where Dean had left it when he went looking for journals two days ago. Her face had changed, too, he realized. The serene calm was broken, now, a facade cracked at the edges, as though she were wearing a mask. He could see a quiet terror in her eyes that he'd never noticed before, though she continued forward as surely as ever. He knew that expression. He saw it all the time. Charlie really was onto something, with the whole 'Dean as Emmay' thing. 

"Oh," Charlie breathed, getting up from the bed, her eyes wide. "Oh, Dean, she's _beautiful._ " 

Dean didn't take the time to process that reaction, because Charlie had moved directly into Emmay's path. He lunged across the bed, grabbing her hand and pulling her back before Emmay could walk straight through her. Dean touching her hat had made her real, last time. He didn't want to think about what an actual collision would do. Charlie let out a startled squeak, then jumped up again as soon as Emmay passed, dragging Dean with her. They swung through the door into the hallway and watched her make her way to the opposite wall and the secret passage. Dean figured once she disappeared again, they'd be done, and maybe he could try once more to get some sleep, but Charlie was pulling him forward again, her hand clamped down on his wrist. 

"Charlie." 

"Don't tell me you're not curious," Charlie said. "We don't have to go far. Maybe we can see something you missed the first time." 

Dean balked, staring at the spot where he knew the secret door would open. "No, really, Charlie, I don't think —" She was already running her free hand along the wall, pressing and tapping with her fingers until she hit a slightly loose tile. The door swung open, and Charlie tugged on his arm again. 

"I know you're not going to let me go down there alone." 

"Goddammit, Charlie." 

She grinned and held up her phone. "Come on. Let's go have an adventure!"

**Chapter 5**

Sam woke to a soft _ding_ next to his ear. He frowned into the darkness, not able at first to place what the noise was. With Dean spending all his time practically attached to Sam's hip, they hadn't had much need for texting each other.

__He rolled over as best he could on the pile of pillows, groping for the phone. When that didn't work, he started heaving the pillows up one by one and flinging them across the room. It made his chest ache, and he ran out of breath far too quickly, but after about ten minutes and one long break to press his sweaty forehead into the nightstand, he'd finally cleared the bed of all but two of the pillows and located his phone at the very bottom of the pile. It lit the room with a dull blue glow as he squinted at it, needing a moment to get his eyes to focus in the comparative brightness of its light._ _

__The message was from Charlie._ _

___ADVENTURE AWAITS!_ it said, followed by a little winky face and an Indiana Jones fedora, then a url. Sam frowned and pressed the link, then waited while the phone switched itself over to the web browser and opened it up. _ _

__It was a video. A very dark, very shaky video, from a live stream, judging by how it picked up mid-sentence._ _

__" _— ld the flashlight a little higher?_ "_ _

__" _This is a terrible idea._ " The shot brightened a little, and Sam could make out a weathered brick pattern, then after a dizzying swing, the outline of a steep, dark staircase. They were going into the vaults. Sam cursed, grabbing his laptop off the nightstand and calling up the URL on there so he could call Dean and watch the video feed comfortably at the same time. He could hear Dean's phone ring in stereo, then the light dipped a bit in the video, accompanied by fumbling noises. _ _

__" _It's Sam._ "_ _

__"Yeah," Sam muttered. "So answer it, you fucking jackass."_ _

__" _He got my text!_ " Charlie practically squealed. The video swung around again, and Sam could see Dean's profile as he raised his phone to his ear. _ _

__" _H'lo._ " _ _

__"You fucking jackass," Sam said, because it was 3-fucking-forty-five in the morning and he was too tired to tiptoe around Dean's delicate feelings. "You're in the fucking vaults."_ _

__He could make out Dean's scowl by the shape of his cheek, silhouetted in the light of his phone. Dean lowered it, and Sam watched as his brother put him on speaker. He reached over to turn the sound off on the laptop before it could start to feedback._ _

__" _Charlie._ " Dean's eyes flicked to the camera. " _It's for you._ " _ _

__" _Hi, Sam!_ " Charlie's hand appeared in front of the camera for a moment, waving. Then the video fuzzed and slid again as she held her phone out at arms length, leaning in like she was taking a selfie. " _We're going exploring. I thought you might want to join us._ " _ _

__Sam put his own phone on speaker so he could rub both his hands over his face. "Are you kidding me?"_ _

__" _This is not my fault._ " Dean sounded almost as tired as Sam felt. " _She got on this whole super librarian thing, and the next thing I knew we were following Emmay._ " _ _

__" _He's oversimplifying._ " Charlie turned the phone back towards the stairs and, judging by the sudden shakiness and darkness of the video feed, starting down. " _And it's 'super librarian powerz', get it right._ "_ _

__Sam was torn between wondering if this was what his dad had felt like when he and Dean fought as kids and wishing that the whole webcam thing hadn't been his idea in the first place. He'd forgotten how shaky footage always made him queasy._ _

__"It's a quarter to four in the morning, guys. This couldn't have waited until we were all awake and prepared?"_ _

__" _Not if we want to see the whole ritual,_ " Charlie said, her voice getting fainter as she got further away from Dean and his phone. " _Hurry it up, they're not going to wait down there forever! . . . Or, you know, maybe they will, if you still have to be part of the whole ritual all over again, I guess. . . ._ "_ _

__Dean groaned under his breath, Sam only catching the sound because his brother still held his phone by his face. " _Emmay death-echoed again. It was this or let her go at it alone. Think you can rally the other troops?_ " _ _

__"You mean Kevin and Cas?"_ _

__" _I'm sure as hell not talking about Crowley._ " _ _

__On the laptop screen, the darkness ahead of Charlie opened up into a wide, low-ceilinged room, like an old, empty wine cellar. Sam couldn't make out much detail, even when Dean pulled up behind her, holding up the flashlight._ _

__"It's really dim, guys," he said. "Can you get any more light in there?"_ _

__" _Pretty sure the gas lines aren't running anymore._ " Charlie aimed her phone at one of the lamps on the nearest wall. " _And, uh, sorry, my phone doesn't have night vision._ " _ _

__" _See, and if we'd_ planned _this —_ "_ _

__" _Noted for next time,_ " Charlie said. " _Let's move along now, huh? Where did the ritual take place?_ " _ _

__Sam turned the brightness up on his laptop and picked it up, trying to work out how to get up out of his giant bed while holding the laptop and the phone, so as not to lose the feed, and make it all the way down the hall to where Cas and Kevin were hopefully fast asleep. A tablet computer would make this whole thing _so_ much easier. If Dean survived tonight, Sam was putting his foot down and making his brother go buy him one. _ _

__" _Straight on_ ," Dean was saying. " _See, where it's a little brighter —_ " _ _

__" _Ooo, yeah._ " _ _

__Sam let their voices fade into the background as he maneuvered himself slowly to standing. He looked from the electronics to the door jamb and back again, then finally sighed._ _

__"KEVIN!" he yelled. "CAS!"_ _

__" _Jesus, Sam!_ " Charlie and Dean said it simultaneously, their intonations eerily matched. Well, at least they weren't arguing any more. _ _

__"Bed ridden, remember?" Sam refused to apologize. "You want cavalry, you have to deal with my methods."_ _

__" _Shhh!_ " That was Charlie, and as much as he loved her, Sam couldn't help but bristle at the idea of her ordering him around. " _Look, there they are!_ " _ _

__Sam slid himself down the wall, looking at the laptop. There were three blurry blue figures, small and partially cut off by an arc of what had to be a doorway. Sam recognized the two men by the general hat shapes of their heads, though Charlie's phone's resolution wasn't good enough in the dark to make out much more detail than that. He heard Dean's boots scrape against the floor as he edged forward and presumably held the phone out towards the spirits, because suddenly, Sam could make out their words._ _

__" _. . . welcome your company. Your spirit has traveled a great distance to be here, and I can only assume it bodes well._ " _ _

__Charlie and Dean must've been holding their breath, because there was nothing but the quiet static of a 'silent' connection for a few moments. Sam leaned as close as he could to the laptop, trying to make out more details of the spirits. The one that had to be Emmay had moved closer to Charlie and Dean, but he couldn't quite make out if she was facing them, or away._ _

__" _That is all a matter of perspective. If you please, I cannot have my William see this, and the ritual requires two witnesses._ " _ _

__She was talking to Dean. The Dean from two nights ago. He could almost hear Dean's voice filling in the pauses, trying to explain that she was long dead and gone._ _

__" _You understand. You are a Winchester, I believe, and a Winchester will understand._ " _ _

__"Not really," Sam grumbled. Dean hissed at him over the line, but as far as Sam could tell, Emmay remained unaffected._ _

__" _Please hold my hat._ " _ _

__"Sam." Even as a human, Cas still somehow managed to _appear_ behind Sam. Though, of course, it helped that Sam was a little bit preoccupied. _ _

__"Dean and Charlie are in the vaults," Sam explained, gesturing to the screen. Castiel leaned over his shoulder, peering at the tiny figures on the screen._ _

__"Can they get a better picture?"_ _

__" _No,_ " Charlie whispered. " _And they can hear you!_ " _ _

__Cas tilted back, looking faintly startled, and then nodded. "Sorry."_ _

__"I told you before, Sam," Kevin said, making much more noise coming down the hallway than Cas had. "I'm not helping you go to the bathroom."_ _

__" _All of you shut. Up._ " That was Dean. " _They're getting to the ritual part._ " _ _

__Kevin joined Cas in leaning over Sam's shoulder. Sam tried not to twitch too much at how close they both were. Instead, he turned up the volume on his phone, opened an audio program on the laptop, and hit record._ _

__" _A temporal imbalance._ " It was a man's voice, this time. One of the other spirits had left while Sam was filling Cas and Kevin in, so Sam guessed this one had to be Richard, the man whose journal he'd been reading. Second in command of the early 20th century Men of Letters Kansas outpost. " _The power required —_ " _ _

__" _It bodes well. A Winchester in this place, from such distance. It can only mean our work here endures. Now let's get on with it, Richard. Before all three of us die of our age._ " _ _

__The actions that the two spirits took as the ritual began were too blurred and pixelated to make out properly on the screen, but Richard's voice came through clear enough, and Sam looked to either side and noted that both Kevin and Cas were paying close attention. If anyone would be able to work out the meaning of the Latin and Aramaic being used, it'd be the three of them. Sam's irritation flickered and dimmed. This really was the only way they were going to get any concrete answers about the ritual Dean had found himself dragged into._ _

__It just would've been nice to get a little bit of warning, first._ _

__" _Be at peace, Mary,_ " Richard finished. Sam thought he heard Charlie sniffle. " _With your blood, the Men of Letters are rechristened. Though war may come, we will not falter. Through death, we will persevere._ " It had the formality of a ritual statement, but Sam was sure that this bit was all Richard. It fit the terse but fond entries in his journal. Sam decided he rather liked Richard, even though he'd been willing to kill his close friend. " _Dean Winchester. Wherever and whenever you are, remember what you witness here tonight. This is the power of your legacy, these are the lengths we'll go to to protect our knowledge. Remem —_ "_ _

__Richard's voice cut out abruptly and the ghosts vanished, leaving the video feed to complete darkness._ _

__" _Oh,_ " Charlie said. No one else spoke for a long time. _ _

____

*

"That enough adventure for you?" Dean asked softly, flashlight still aimed at the spot where the spirits had been. He still couldn't remember what had happened next when he'd witnessed the ritual the first time, though watching it now had awakened an odd sense of déjà vu. He'd had to bite the inside of his lip to keep from responding to Emmay the same way he had the first time, his own words still crisp in his mind, like they were lines rehearsed for a play.

The whole place creeped him the hell out. 

He could feel Charlie shaking slightly beside him, though he didn't turn to look at her. He stared down at the floor instead. If he squinted, he thought he could make out a wide, dark circle on the bricks beneath the thick layer of dust, a century old blood stain that was never scrubbed clean. He wondered how long Richard had sat there with Emmay, after she died, if he had cradled her to his chest, or if he'd immediately stood, getting right back to work. Had William stayed close, just out of sight, listening to his wife sacrifice herself? Had he come running back and gathered her up, skirt and all, holding her while he cried? 

Did he sit vigil over her for days, unable to let go? Had he considered finding a way to bring her back?

Just how deep did the Winchester martyr complex run? 

What Sam didn't seem to realize was that Dean had _done_ him being dead, before. He'd been forced to see that, to hold his brother while the life went out of him, to lay him out on an old, dusty bed and watch him go grey and stiff. It was a lifetime ago, a literal lifetime of Hell and war and Purgatory, but Dean still saw it when he closed his eyes. He could still feel what it was like to look at his brother's body and know that Sam _wasn't in there anymore_. He couldn't do that again — hadn't been able to do it in the first place. Sam dying broke Dean so much that he willingly went to Hell, and then he'd been forced to watch Sam throw himself purposefully into that same fucking pit — and now Sam was pissed that Dean couldn't do it all over again? Sam had the _gall_ to think that Dean would put anyone or any _thing_ in front of his wellbeing? 

"Uh," Charlie said. ". . . Dean?" 

Dean blinked. His hand was clenched so hard around the flashlight that the beam shook. 

"Let's go deeper." He smiled cruelly when he heard Sam curse him over the still open phone line. His thumb 'slipped', ending the call, and he shoved the phone into his pocket before forcing himself to swing the light — and his gaze — away from the faint bloodstain marking the floor. 

"Oh," said Charlie. "Uh, yeah. Okay." He heard her fumbling with her phone for a moment, then a second bright light switched on. He glanced back, frowning. "Flash," she said. 

"And you didn't think of that _before?_ " 

"I . . . may have been awake for almost forty-eight hours." His frown went from irritated to concerned, and she shrugged, pumping her free fist in the air. "Adventurrrrre." 

Great. Just what Dean needed. Another reckless idiot on his 'protect at all costs' list. 

Dean's phone rang. He considered not answering it, but Sam would just keep calling. He let it ring a moment longer than usual, just to piss Sam off, then pulled it out and set it to speaker again. 

"Sorry, Sammy. Thumb slipped."

Sam didn't bother to argue, though Dean knew he'd get an earful about it later. " _You are not exploring that place with only a sleep deprived hacker for back up._ " 

"Excuse me!" Charlie huffed. "I think you mean sleep deprived _hunter_." 

Dean groaned. "Tell you me you haven't." First she talked about using magic to find Cas, and now she was calling herself a hunter. He and Sam had created a monster.

Possibly literally, if she ended up on the wrong end of something bite-y because of them. 

"Well, duh." Charlie shouldered her way past him, headed further into the room — a smaller version of the arched entrance hall behind them. Tunnels led off in two directions; she picked the one William had aimed for. "What am I supposed to do, close my eyes, stick my fingers in my ears, and go 'lalala, evil shit can't hurt anyone if I can't see it'?" 

"You have _no_ training." 

"You've already tested my shooting skills. Do you want to see me with a knife?" 

Dean closed his eyes and groaned. "Help me out here, Sam." 

" _Cas is coming down to join you,_ " Sam said, the exact opposite of helpful. Dean tipped his head; he could hear footsteps now above and behind them. 

"Thank you, Sam," Charlie said. "See, Sam agrees with me." 

" _Sam is Switzerland_ ," Sam said. 

" _Don't be fooled, Charlie._ " That'd be Kevin, then. The gang was all here, if conferencing in via speakerphone could be considered 'here'. " _These idiots are just going to get you killed._ " 

"Wow," Charlie said. "He's cheerful." She edged her way up to the entrance into the next hall, pressing her back against the curved brick before leaning in and shining the camera. "Holy _shitsnacks!_ " 

" _What the hell?_ " Sam said, and Dean answered "She's found something," before remembering that Sam was watching Charlie's video feed and knew that before Dean did. 

"I found a flying monkey!" Charlie yelled. Dean jogged over to take a look. 

The ugly-ass evil baboon thing from the skylight in the observatory, complete with — yep — great big moth-eaten wings, leered at them from about ten feet into the room, it's teeth no less long and sharp than he remembered, though they were dull grey with dust and what looked like mold. 

"Talk about your taxiderpy," Charlie said. She held her phone up as she circled it, getting it from all angles. "Guys, your ancestors were into some weird shit." 

Dean would point out that the whole fact that they were all in a 1940s underground bunker with a secret passage populated with the death echo of a ritual sacrifice probably should have been her first clue, but he was a little bit too preoccupied with his staring contest with one of his hallucinations. 

It looked nothing like the things from the movie. Its skin and fur were black, for one, instead of blue, and it clearly wasn't built to spend much of its time on two legs. Its wings, as dark as the rest of it, were at least twice as long as it was tall, and thickly muscled under the thin layer of feathers, attached just below shoulders thick enough to do a silver-backed gorilla proud. It looked like it'd be at least as tall as he was, standing, maybe even matching Sam, and its front paws ended in claws nearly as long as its teeth. Its eyes — glass, Dean realized — were crossed and lopsided, giving it a maniacal look that really wasn't helping the whole 'evil killer monkey' vibe. No wonder Dean had nearly thrown himself off a balcony when he'd first seen it. 

"You guys are definitely seeing this, too," he said, keeping the flashlight pointed at its face. "This thing is actually here, in front of us." 

Charlie finished her circling and came to stand next to Dean. She reached out to poke the end of one of its teeth, and Dean had to stop himself from yanking her back away from it. Though it was clearly just a stuffed specimen — if not a Men of Letters idea of a prank — he still half expected it to snap its jaws shut on her hand. 

"Yup," she said. "That is a solid, totally real and present stuffed flying monkey." She looked over at him. "Why?" 

" _Dean?_ " Sam asked. Dean swallowed. 

"Observatory." 

" _Oh._ " Sam paused. Dean could hear Cas's footsteps behind them in the quiet. " _That's . . . interesting._ "

"Yeah, it's fucking fascinating, Spock, thanks for your input." Dean ran his hand down his face and straightened, looking away from the monkey to the rest of the room for the first time. "I must've been in here, before. That first night." 

"I'm not seeing any footprints," Charlie said. "The dust is pretty thick." 

"Yeah, but our flashlights aren't that great," Dean said. "I must've already seen this thing. I just — couldn't remember." 

Charlie said something under her breath that sounded like "super librarian powerz". Dean decided to pretend he didn't hear her. 

"Dean!" Cas called, and Dean turned to shine his flashlight through the ritual room. 

"Over here, man! Mind the stuffed animals." 

"Why would I have to pay attention to toys?" Cas asked, walking swiftly through the ritual room towards Dean's light. He still wore the hoodie and jeans he'd had on when he arrived, but he was now carrying one of Sam and Dean's duffels. "Ah. I see." 

Dean glanced back to see Charlie going all Vanna White on the winged monkey like it was a grand prize washer and dryer set. She caught his eye and smiled cheerfully. 

"Adventure." 

"One of these days, we're going to have to have a long talk about your definition of that word," Dean said. Cas stepped around him, moving in to get a closer look at the monkey. 

"Interesting. As far as I knew, none of these creatures ever set foot outside of Oz." 

"Hang on." Charlie gaped at him. "Oz is _real?_ " 

"A few dimensions over," Cas said, as though he was talking about a restaurant down the street. "Past Purgatory." 

"Oz!" Charlie squeaked. Her light wobbled as she shook her hands in the air. "Omigosh!" 

"Fangirl later." Dean nodded to the little penlight Cas was holding. "Did you bring any other light?" 

"Ah. Yes." Cas pulled out a camping lantern from the duffel and switched it on. The room was small enough that the light filled it, showing several other display cases arranged around the space, each holding its own little bit of otherworldly creepy. Dean spotted what looked like a bedazzled human skull on one pedestal; on another, a small, two-headed chupacabra. It was like a Ripley's Believe It or Not for the supernatural crowd. "Your ancestors appear to have been quite the collectors." 

"No shit." Dean aimed his flashlight through the dusty glass around a scaled, bald human-shaped head, with catfish whiskers and sunken eye sockets. He grimaced. _Bishop-fish_ , his mind supplied. _Extremely rare, found mostly in and around the Baltic Sea._

Fucking disgusting, he told his mind. Why would anyone keep that? 

And then his head was filled with the numerous ritual and magical applications of the preserved head of a bishop-fish. He groaned and turned away. 

"This place wasn't totally abandoned." He aimed his flashlight up along the walls rather than risk another information-download from looking at the wrong specimen. "That winged monkey wasn't acquired until the mid-1930s. This place was converted for storage after the rest of the bunker was completed in the twenties. It didn't get shut down until —" he paused, a little alarmed to find himself impatient when the information didn't immediately spring to the front of his mind. "1939."

" _How could you possibly know that?_ " Sam asked. Dean looked at Charlie, who was peering at something small under another glass case across the room. She looked up with a grin. 

"Super librarian powerz!"

" _Do I want to know?_ " 

Dean sighed. "Charlie thinks the bunker is downloading all its information straight into my head. That's why I found Richard and Esther's journals so quickly." He heaved in another breath. "And maybe why I hallucinated our ugly monkey friend, over there." 

" _. . . You're a walking card catalog?_ " Sam asked. 

" _Great,_ " said Kevin, sounding distant over the phone line, like he'd gotten bored and was halfway back to bed already. " _Make_ him _stare at the old rocks all day, then._ "

"Shut up." 

"Dean." Cas stared at him through furrowed brows. "This is disturbing. I don't believe the human mind was constructed to house so much information simultaneously." 

Dean was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to feel vaguely insulted by that. 

"Someone please tell me that these things come from some other dimension, too?" Charlie asked. "Because I do not want to have to deal with an infestation of them." 

Dean looked over. She was looking at a case on the wall, some sort of insect specimen display. He started over to her when she shrieked and hopped back, reaching for his arm. 

"It _moved!_ " 

Dean already knew what he was going to see when he looked in the case. Sure enough, front and center in a collection of equally disturbing looking creatures was millipede-cockroach thing he'd seen on the table, a thin silver pin stuck straight through its middle. Its legs wiggled, and Dean looked away while he could still pretend that was a trick of the light. "Purgatory," he said, swallowing and shooting a glance over at Cas. He'd never encountered the things while he was there; it was impossible to tell by his expression if Casl had. "Sam? You getting this?" 

" _I can't make out anything in the cases,_ " Sam said. " _The glare from the flash is too bright._ " 

Dean sighed. He was going to have to drag Sam down here when he was fighting fit again. "It's the fucking bug," he said. 

" _From the library?_ " 

"Mmhm." 

" _The reason he shrieked?_ " asked Kevin.

"Shut up," said Dean.

" _Wow,_ " said Sam. " _Maybe you really do have super librarian powers._ " 

"Zzz," Charlie said. "With a Z." 

"No," said Dean. "Come on, let's keep moving. Somewhere down here is Slenderman." 

Charlie cheered. Cas frowned. "What does a skinny man have to do with —" 

Dean patted Cas on the shoulder. "I'll explain it all, later."

*

Slenderman turned out to be an old suit on a dusty tailor's dummy, its slouching shape a byproduct of the form warping over time. Dean stared at it, thinking about how twisted his brain had to be to turn it into a creepy internet stalker, then turned away. "Anyone seen any footprints, yet?"

"Nope," Charlie said cheerfully. "Cas?" 

"There's no evidence anyone other than ourselves has been through this area in the last fifty years." Cas crouched down to examine the dust in the glow of his lantern. "If you've been in this room before, you were floating." 

" _I know a lot has changed,_ " Sam said. " _But I'm pretty sure Dean still can't fly._ " His interjections had grown more and more infrequent. Dean had tried ordering him back to bed two rooms ago, but had known even as he said it that it was a lost cause. 

" _That place is enormous,_ " Kevin said. He'd been exactly zero help in getting Sam back to bed. The two of them were going to try to mutiny against Dean, if he wasn't careful. " _I've been trying to map it as you go. It looks like you've circled around on yourselves at least twice._ " 

"Dean?" Charlie asked, turning the camera — and thus, her flash — on him. "Any super librarian insight?" 

"No," Dean said. He'd been putting together a mental map of his own, but he was pretty sure that was just his natural sense of direction. "How much battery do you have left on that phone?" 

Charlie looked down. "Getting a little low," she admitted. "We should probably take a break to recharge."

Cas looked up from where he was examining a cracked mirror by the door. "Is there anything else you're expecting to find, first?" 

Dean pictured the slow spin of an infinity of stars, an emptiness deeper and more profound than anything else he could possibly imagine. 

"No," he said. "Not really." 

"We can follow our own footsteps back," Cas said, as though only just realizing it himself. 

"Yeah, man." Dean nodded to him. "We're not going to get lost down here." 

"I'm still not used to not knowing precisely where I am on a universal scale," Cas admitted. "How you find your way around any space at all astounds me." 

"He's not kidding," Charlie said. "I tried to let him be the navigator on the way over here. We almost ended up driving into Michigan. State _and_ lake." 

"I'm sorry, Dean." Cas straightened and looked at him very seriously. "Your life is far more complex and filled with more terror and pain than I ever expected."

"Uh. Thanks." Dean wasn't sure why that required an apology. "You get used to it." 

"And sometimes," Charlie offered, "it's magical instead of terrifying." She yawned wide, letting out a little squeaking noise as she did. Cas yawned back, then frowned. "Oof," Charlie said. "Speaking of batteries dying." 

" _You guys better come back up,_ " Sam said, a yawn lurking under his own voice. Dean shook his head. 

"This is why I tried to put you people to sleep hours ago." 

"Uh huh. Because you're leading by example, right?" Charlie hooked her arm through Cas's elbow. Cas looked down at her hand, still frowning. Charlie patted his bicep. "It's a human thing." Cas nodded, then offered his other elbow to Dean. 

"That's okay, Cas." Dean smirked. "You two go on. I'll be right behind you." 

Both Cas and Charlie stared at him, their eyes glinting in the sharp blue light of their combined lamps. 

"What?" Dean asked. "You think I'm going to run away and hide down here?" He forced his own yawn and smacked his lips. "Gaining super librarian powers —" He held up his hand to stop Charlie from correcting his pronunciation. "Is tiring work. I just want to check one more thing." 

They stared at him a moment longer, then Cas looked down at Charlie, who nodded slowly. "Yeah," she said. "Okay. But if you're not back upstairs ten minutes after we are, buster, I am coming back down to drag you out myself." 

"Noted." Dean gave her a tired smile. He gestured back through the door to the room with his head. "Now move it." 

Charlie nodded one more time, then tugged on Cas's elbow. They both headed back out, muttering softly to each other, either about the footprints in the dust or Dean's thick head. Probably both. Dean followed them to the last t-junction they'd passed, then watched after them until he couldn't see their lights any more and headed off down the still unexplored corridor. 

" _You know what you're doing, Dean?_ " Sam asked softly. Dean had nearly forgotten he still had his brother on speaker. 

"Nope," Dean said. It would take Cas and Charlie at least another twenty minutes to get back upstairs, and he knew Sam wouldn't hang up on him to call them, or send Kevin down to go get him — the kid had gone quiet again, and Dean hoped that meant he'd finally gone back to bed. He could afford to be honest with Sam when there was no way to stop him. "But they don't need to see the other shit I've seen." 

" _You going to tell me what that is?_ "

"Not planning on it." Dean's flashlight only extended about ten feet in front of him. Beyond that, the darkness was complete. He could feel it pressing into his back as he walked even as it fled from the blue circle of light on the floor. It led him and chased him in equal measure, and Dean was surprised to realize he found it soothing. This darkness was full, even heavy. Half expecting at any moment to stumble upon the empty void of deep space, the dark of the hallway felt like a warm blanket. 

He heard a low roar up ahead and picked up his pace. The circling motion that Kevin had tracked was real, though the curves were wider than they must've looked over Charlie's video feed. The entire vault system was built essentially in a large spiral shape, with the entrance at the outer edge. Dean was pretty sure that sound came from the center of the whole complex. 

A hallway branched off to his left, cutting through the spiral like the spoke of a wagon wheel, and Dean turned down it at a jog. The shaking of the flashlight made the hallway seem to rock and sway, so after a few moments, Dean switched it off. He closed his eyes — there was nothing to see without the light on, anyway — and stretched his other senses, listening to the roar in the distance between the claps of his feet on the stone floor, smelling the dust and picking up a faint mineral tang of damp stone. His proximity warnings went wild, as they always did when he moved forward without looking, and he stretched one arm out in front of him and slowed to make sure he didn't smack his face into any walls. He could feel a faint brush of air across his cheeks, but couldn't tell if it was an actual breeze, or just the effect of moving quickly through a still environment. 

Another sense, a new one, stretched out around him, cataloging the change of the wall from brick to stone. The entire network of tunnels stretched out around him, the bunker itself above him, like a 3D map in a video game. There were barracks further along the hall he'd been walking along before turning down this one, built after Emmay but before the bunker, room for the Men of Letters who came to assist the move from Italy during World War I. The room with the tailor's dummy had been a working tailor, once upon a time, supplying the organization with suits of all types for their fact finding missions around the world — and through the dimensions. There was another kitchen down here, another bathroom, with sophisticated plumbing for the era. Another gun range, and an old library, now empty of anything but bare shelves and cobwebs. 

There were bugs down here of course, and yes, the occasional mouse or snake who managed to make its way through the narrow cracks in the old brick walls, but he was the only large living creature in the old complex. Cas and Charlie had made it out through the metal door at the top of the stairs — the old front entrance. Emmay didn't follow the hallway on her final walk because there'd been no hallway, just an empty field between a farmhouse and a ramshackle barn. Kevin walked down the hall past the secret passage. Sam sat in the doorway to his room, the laptop on his folded legs, even though the only feed to watch was Charlie's progress behind the bunker kitchen. 

"You could at least be sitting in bed, Sam," he said, a soft murmur swallowed by the dark. 

" _. . . I am,_ " Sam said back, and Dean smiled, marvelling at how closely connected they were, able to communicate even through walls of stone and hard-packed dirt. 

Then he remembered the phone again, and his smile faded. 

"Don't lie to me, jackass." His voice came out a little firmer this time, and he opened his eyes. The map of the complex dissolved around him, and he was once more just one man in a dark hallway, wrapped up and hollow. The loss of connection ached like an enormous severed limb. He didn't hear anything but his own breath and footsteps for a few moments and he slowed, turning his head to try to catch the roar again. 

" _There,_ " Sam said. " _I'm in bed now. Happy?_ " 

Dean closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to bring back the awareness and check to see if Sam was lying to him again, but all he got with his eyes closed was more darkness. 

"Ecstatic," he said, swallowing a sigh. Sam didn't need to hear how his whole body throbbed. "Now shut up. And keep Cas and Charlie quiet, too. I know they're back with you." 

Sam spluttered; Dean smirked. Maybe there was some use to the whole librarian thing, after all. 

He kept moving at a walk, this time, and after three paces of being absolutely _convinced_ he was about to walk face first into a wall, magical librarian mapping powers be damned, he switched his flashlight back on. He almost jumped, he was so sure in that moment that something would _be there_ , all teeth and claws and suits and evil mystery — but the hallway was empty. 

For a few moments there, he'd been connected to absolutely everything. Now, he was back to being plain old idiot Dean. No. _Human_ Dean. With all the complexity and pain and terror that came with it. 

The roar was much closer, now, and it'd gained a rhythm. It was the sound of an enormous, slow moving fan, not unlike the one that had topped Bobby's panic room back in South Dakota, with another rushing underneath it. Dean smiled again as he recognized it. The hallway hooked a sharp corner to the right, then opened up into a massive cavern, at least two stories tall and wide enough for two football fields placed side by side. Dean switched the flashlight off as he entered, tipping his head back to get the full effect. 

He'd found the universe. 

The cavern was lined on every wall with spots of bioluminescent fungi, each letting off an eerie blue glow. The air was damp and cool, kept moving by the large fan at the top of the cavern which spun with a ponderous _whoomph_. He could make out the blades by the lines of blue defining their edges; they spun lazily counterclockwise, ruffling the plants. He stepped closer to the wall, fingers hovering only centimeters away. 

_Panellus stipticus_ , that strange new corner of his brain supplied. _Rare subspecies, attracted to the supernatural._ Looking closer, he could see the faint outline of etching beneath the plants, an intricate and antique spellwork that he suddenly knew stretched the entire length and breadth of the cavern, supplying the base for the wards, the climate control, and the flow of electricity and water to the whole bunker. It even managed to boost the wifi they used to connect to the internet. It was the reason why the countless tons of dirt and rock separating them hadn't disconnected his phone call with Sam. 

It was the reason Sam was still alive. 

This was what Emmay had died for. This was what her soul still wandered the halls and relived the ritual to power and protect. 

This was the very heart of the Men of Letters.

The rushing roar under the noise of the ventilation fan — also powered by the spellwork and Emmay's soul — came from the thin, dark stripe down the far wall of the cavern where the fungus wasn't able to get a foothold. Dean stepped towards it, and his foot splashed down into the edge of a wide, algae-filled lake. 

"Hey, Sam," he said softly. 

" _Dean. What's happening? What's all that noise?!_ " 

"I think I owe you an apology." 

" _What?! Dammit, Dean —_ " 

Dean cut him off with a laugh, his chest feeling not so much hollow anymore as full up with helium. "Frank Lloyd Wright," he said. 

" _. . . What?_ " 

"We really do have a waterfall."

*

As far as Sam could tell, it took Dean another half an hour after his little waterfall moment to make it back up to the bunker proper. Sam kept his phone on the whole time, though Dean didn't speak again after saying he was on his way back, and Sam said nothing in return. He listened to the fuzz of static and his brother's footsteps, and the easy breathing of his friends at his side. Charlie and Cas hadn't wanted to go back to bed until after Dean made it back safely, and had fallen asleep on each other sitting against the wall in the hallway where Sam had set up his little command post. He didn't know how Dean knew he wasn't in bed — lucky guess, most likely — and it'd been an easy lie to tell him he'd gone.

He had at least gotten himself a couple of pillows — or rather had Kevin get them for him. Charlie cuddled one of them like a teddy bear, her head on Cas's shoulder. Cas' head was tipped back carelessly against the wall in a way that made Sam's neck hurt just to look at. He snored. Sam was tempted to tip his head down and over, so it rested on Charlie's, but didn't want to accidentally wake them. 

He didn't feel much like talking to anyone, just now. 

He'd recognized Dean's apology. It was the patented Dean Winchester "I'll apologize for something little and stupid, and it's the same as apologizing for all the big shit I get wrong" apology. Sam usually let him get away with it, too, knowing that trying for something better, something more explicit, would be like pulling his brother's teeth out one by one and then starting on his nails, but he wasn't in the mood for an apology dodge this time. He wanted to hear Dean say he was wrong, that he knew his priorities were fucked up _and that he wanted to fix them_. 

He was lucky, he supposed. He didn't want to even imagine what would have happened if he hadn't started to recover when Dean got him back to the bunker. If the trials had stripped him of too much for him to keep going, even without completing them. What would his brother have given up, then? 

Dean had started with giving up his soul. There wasn't much left after that to ante up with. 

Whatever it was, though, Dean would give it. It wouldn't matter if Sam wanted it. Wouldn't matter if it ended up fucking over the entire world. Dean couldn't even see the world when it came to Sam and because of that, everything that the demons did from here on out would be on Sam's head. Because he couldn't convince his idiot brother to let him finish it. 

Because when it came right down to it, Sam couldn't say no to Dean. Not when he was standing right in front of him. 

If only Dean really had died fighting Dick Roman. Sam could have handled that. Had been handling it. It had sucked — it'd been so painful at times that Sam hadn't honestly believed he'd ever actually see the other side of it all — but he'd _handled_ it. When Dean wasn't there, Sam could be a real, functional human being. 

Maybe Dean would stay in the vaults. Maybe he'd go completely off his rocker and decide he had to do a repeat performance of Emmay's sacrifice. Sam would hear mumbled Latin and badly pronounced Aramaic, and then that little breathless grunt Dean didn't know he made when he had to cut his own flesh, and Sam would be too far away and too injured to stop him — and it'd be over. 

He shouldn't like that idea. 

He should absolutely tell someone he was thinking like this. 

Dean's footsteps through the phone changed tenor as his feet hit wood instead of stone, and Sam straightened against the wall. Dean had made it to the top of the stairs, then, was in the passage behind the kitchen. Sam pushed himself slowly to his feet, his laptop forgotten on the floor, and shuffled along the wall to the doorway, glad that Cas and Charlie hadn't decided to crash out between him and the passage. He could see Dean's outline, glowing eerie blue, and he bit back a gasp. For a moment, he thought Dean really had done it, had sacrificed himself without even telling Sam goodbye. Then he realized he could hear his brother breathing, heavy and softly exhausted, and swallowed down the bile that had risen in his throat. 

"Dude," he said, forcing his voice to keep steady as he watched the effect fade incrementally as Dean came closer to the bunker hall lights. "You're glowing." 

Dean picked his head up and straightened his shoulders from their tired slouch. He was wet, soaked through to his elbows and knees, with damp hair like he'd stood in the spray of the waterfall. "Dude," he said back. "You're standing." 

"What the hell are you covered in?" 

Dean looked down at himself. " _Pyrocystis fusiformis_ ," he said, shaking out a hand and raining wet spots along the baseboards. "Bioluminescent plants freaking love that place." 

"Jesus." Sam wrinkled his nose, not wanting to think about how Dean knew the scientific name apparently off the top of his head.. "Maybe you should shower." 

"It's harmless, dude," Dean said. "You can buy it on the internet." 

"Right." Sam crossed his arms and tried to loom. That wasn't easy to do when he still needed the wall's support to stand up straight. "Because everything you find on the internet is totally harmless." He wanted to grab his brother and shake him and scream, but he didn't have the energy for any of it. "Did you find what you were looking for?" 

Dean scowled, picking up on the bitter undertones Sam hadn't managed to keep out of his voice. "What, are you jealous? Sammy doesn't get to be the special smart one any more?" He pushed past Sam, shoving something large and rectangular and wrapped in an old piece of oilskin against his chest. "Here. Another book for the boy genius." He started down the hall — away from his room. 

"Where the hell are you going _now?_ " Sam demanded, giving the book only the most cursory glance for now. He saw Cas and Charlie jump a little, woken by the rising volume of Sam's voice, but he couldn't bring himself to care. 

"Checking on Crowley," Dean said without turning around. 

"It's almost six in the morning!" 

Dean glanced back over his shoulder, looking at Sam consideringly. There was an edge under his gaze that Sam couldn't put his finger on, and it unnerved him. He seemed to be getting harder and harder to read since this whole Emmay thing had started. "Then go to bed," he said finally, and went back to his slow, tired shuffle, his hands shoved into his pockets. 

Sam watched him go, not realizing until he heard the weary, almost coughed out " _fuck_ " from his pocket that their phones were still connected. Sam was just pulling it out to hit 'end' when Dean walked back again, still hunched and shuffling, his hands now fisted in his hair. 

"Crowley's gone," he said. 

"Right," said Sam on a sigh. "Of course he is."

**Chapter Six**

"What did you do?"

It was astonishing, really, how Sam managed to go from barely mobile to actually pacing. Any other time, he'd be ecstatic — he hadn't managed this many steps consecutively in weeks. Figured it'd take something like this to get him off his ass. 

"Sam," Charlie tried. Sam dismissed her with a raise of his hand, eyes locked on his brother. 

Dean sat hunched at the main table in the library, books and laptop pushed haphazardly to the side to make room for his elbows, his hands wrapped up over the crown of his head. Sam couldn't see his face. He didn't need to. 

"You knew, Dean." He paced back towards the observatory, past the room where Cas and Kevin were examining Dean's new book. He grabbed onto the back of a chair as the room started to spin faintly around him, but didn't let himself sit, yet. He was too busy seething at his goddamn idiot of a brother to sit. "You haven't regularly checked on Crowley in weeks, but suddenly you have to do it before you can go to bed? You _knew._ " 

Dean didn't look up, didn't so much as shift in his seat, but Sam read the flinch in the tightening of his fingers. His anger flared brighter, making the room pick up speed, and he roughly yanked the chair around, barely managing to sit instead of collapse into it. 

"Look at me." Sam leaned across the table, ready to physically pull Dean's hands away from his face. " _Look at me._ " 

"Sam." Charlie rounded the table and pulled him back, both her hands clamping onto one of his biceps. Sam glared at her, but she didn't shrink back. He had almost a full foot on her, standing, and more than a hundred pounds, but she glared right back at him like he was an overgrown toddler. "This isn't helping." 

"He _lost_ the King of Hell." 

"Yuh-huh, okay," Charlie said. "But in case you haven't noticed, both of you have gone a little bit completely batshit in here, and screaming and pulling each other's hair doesn't sound like demon hunting behavior to me." 

"He's right." They were the first words Dean had spoken since announcing Crowley was missing. 

"Dean," Charlie said. "Shut up when I'm trying to help you." 

Dean's hands dragged slowly through his hair before crashing down on the table top. He peered up at them through his eyebrows. 

"I knew." 

Sam almost shouted "aha!" Had his finger up and pointed and everything. Charlie's hard glare stopped the sound short in the back of his throat. 

"I knew you weren't in your room," Dean said. He leaned his weight on his elbows and pushed himself slowly to his feet. "I knew Charlie and Cas were at the top of the stairs and that Kevin was in the hallway, and I didn't know where Crowley was. I could have told you where every goddamn rodent and spider was in those goddamn vaults, and Crowley was completely unaccounted for." He looked up finally, his eyes like marbles. "So, yeah. I knew." 

Sam held his gaze, feeling his anger boil over, then slowly begin to settle. He dropped his chin a fraction. "How'd it happen?" 

Dean pulled away from the table with a huff, his hands going to his hair again. "The canary." 

Sam bit back a curse. 

"Your stupid 'drag Crowley into the vaults' plan." 

"The chains caught when I was pulling him out. Scraped up part of the trap. I was so hopped up on — you know." He gestured towards Charlie, and Sam half expected her to take the cue and mention "super librarian powerz" again, but she remained quiet, watching Dean with sad, sorry eyes. "I was lucky I got my fucking boots tied. I didn't even think to look." 

"He could still be in here, though, right?" Sam tried. "This place is a fortress. There are something like seven devil's traps layered over each other in here." 

Dean's shoulders came up, but Sam couldn't call the movement a shrug. "The whole building's one. Iron, like what Colt did out in Wyoming. Only problem is, this one has a latch." He looked back towards the front room, the railing and stairs. 

"The front fucking door," Sam said. 

"Oh," Charlie breathed. "The one that Cas and I —" 

"No," Dean said. "The one that _I_ left open, when I went out to talk to Cas. It's like an airlock, the inner door is supposed to be closed any time the outer door opens. I wasn't exactly paying attention when I went out there." Sam remembered the way the inner door had slowly swung closed and winced. Dean looked up at him, his expression open and aching. "I'm sorry, Sam. I know you wanted. . . ." 

The words pulled the plug on Sam's anger and it spiralled out and away. There. Those were the words he'd been wanting to hear. 

_I'm sorry, Sam._

No qualifiers. No ridiculous misdirect. 

_I'm sorry, Sam._

They didn't forgive each other out loud. Not in this family. They barely managed to do it silently, and Sam wasn't there, not yet. But for the first time in weeks, he wasn't trying to breathe through the steam of his own rage. 

"What, Dean?" Sam asked, his voice low. "What do you think I wanted? What did you think I was going to do? Heal up and _then_ cure Crowley? Is that what we're doing here? Looking for a loophole?" 

Dean tried on a smile, but couldn't pull it up all the way to his eyes. "We've got to find one, eventually." 

Sam shook his head, looking away. "I don't know, Dean. I don't know if I believe in them any more." 

_I'm not sure I believe in you anymore._

"Yeah." Dean's face crumpled by degrees. "Well. I guess that's fair enough." 

The words hung in the air, both spoken and unspoken, like dust in a still and empty room, until Charlie cleared her throat. 

"Okay subtexters," she said. "That's great and all, but you're both still batshit bonkers, and I'm pretty sure the ex-angel is the only one who's not running on caffeine and magic fumes. What say we call it a day and a night and a day again and _go to bed?_ " 

Dean's eyes squinched up at the edges like he wasn't sure what 'bed' even meant any more. Sam knew how he felt, and he'd spent the last three weeks in one. He slouched deeper into his chair at even the thought of getting up and walking back to his own room. 

This was what he got for pacing. 

"Yeah, we could do bed." He tipped his head, trying to signal Charlie to pull Dean along. He could follow them. 

Eventually. 

"Crowley?" Dean asked. 

"It's not the first time Crowley's been let loose on the world," Sam said. "It'll survive him a little longer, at the very least." 

Cas came out of Kevin's reading room, the book Dean had brought up from the vaults open in his hands. "Dean," he said. "This is —" 

"Emmay's diary," Dean said. "I know." 

"You found her grave?" Kevin asked, coming up behind Cas, coffee cup in hand. Sam frowned at him and he shrugged. "I've been skimming Esther's stuff. She mentioned it was buried with her." He shuddered and shook his head. "Which is why I'm making him do all the touching." 

"It's perfectly clean," Cas said. "It's been well-preserved, considering." 

"Yeah?" Dean smirked. "'Cause she sure wasn't. They stuck her at the bottom of that waterfall." 

No wonder he'd been all wet. "You went swimming for it?" 

Dean cast him a sidelong look. "Had to. All you nerds need to get your knowledge on." 

Charlie frowned. "Don't you just . . . already know everything in it?" 

Dean shook his head, then tapped his temple. "Thing is full of acquisition dates and random facts, near as I can tell. Not big on personal details. I know she did a spell, though. Right before the ritual. Let her 'reach through time'." 

Sam leaned forward in his chair, gesturing for Cas to pass him the book. It was the same size and shape as Richard's, though it had more evidence of wear and damage than his. The oilcloth had kept it reasonably dry, but there was still evidence of water damage around the edges. He flipped it open and felt a pang as he noticed it wasn't even half-full. "She summoned you on purpose." 

Charlie leaned in to read over his shoulder. Kevin darted out towards the kitchen, coffee cup in hand, as though he thought he could sneak off without anyone noticing. Sam let him go without comment. The kid always seemed to need a little more space than he or Dean did. Dean and Cas hovered in front of Sam, Dean with his arms crossed, watching Sam like a hawk. 

Sam flipped through the book, squinting in places where the ink had faded or smudged. He slowed down as he neared the end of the filled pages. He didn't have to read whole sentences to notice the fear and pride that lay under everything she wrote. She'd known she was going to die for some time before it happened, apparently. There were a few notes about potential alternative rituals, then a passage Sam was sure must refer to Esther. 

_My dear friend told me of a dream she had. A man, quite the ruffian by her accounting, in rough-hewn and ill-tailored clothes with no hat, followed me into the cellar. In the dream I called him "cousin". She says he'll come to help me, to spare Wil —_ And the rest of the smeared into illegibility. 

"Esther saw you," Charlie said, apparently having come to the same conclusion Sam did. "In a vision, I guess."

"Yeah?" Dean asked. "Did she see the part where it'd drive me crazy and make me let the King of Hell escape?" 

"Dean," Cas said. "If a prophet saw you here, in the bunker, that means she saw past the apocalypse. This could still be all part of my father's plan." 

Dean shuddered. Sam felt the hair on his neck rise in sympathy. 

"Great," said Charlie. "Because that sure hasn't bitten them in the ass, before." 

Sam closed the book carefully and set it down on the library table as though it might explode if he made any sudden moves. "On that note," he said. "I guess it's time for bed."

*

Dean showed up first. He gave Sam a sheepish grimace when he appeared in his doorway, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and his boxers. The circles under his eyes were so dark, it was like looking at a skull.

"Sorry, man." He gestured vaguely at the hallway behind him. "I just — you've got all the pillows." 

Sam wasn't sure what Dean had meant to say, if it was an "I lost Crowley and need the comfort I'll never ask for out loud" thing, or an "I have an entire library in my head and apparently a destiny again and I'm terrified and I need the comfort I'll never ask for out loud" thing. Or maybe an "I still don't trust you and my defenses are down, so I need to be able to see you when I open my eyes" thing. 

Probably that last one. 

What he did know for sure was that he wasn't going to turn Dean down on this. The idea that they hadn't escaped "God's plan" yet spooked him, too, and even though he was still angry, Sam wasn't going to turn his brother away when he looked like that. 

He scooted over in the bed, making room, and Dean hunched his shoulders and shuffled over, positioning himself to take up as little of the other side of the bed as possible. He started on his back, shifted back and forth a few times, then finally ended up on his side, facing Sam, before he fell asleep. 

He was like a faithful old dog, unable to sleep properly unless he knew his master was close and under his guard. 

Damn him. 

Cas arrived next, maybe twenty minutes after Dean had. Sam was still awake, buzzing faintly with the leftover adrenaline of the strange night even as his body ached, and he was able to put his finger to his lips to shush Cas before he called to Dean. 

"He wasn't in his room," Cas whispered, sounding both concerned and petulant. Sam sighed. 

"There's plenty of room. This bed's enormous." 

Dean woke up groggily while Cas pondered how to climb over him and get into the bed. He looked up at Cas, then over at Sam, then rolled into the center, opening up the side of the bed, and fell right back asleep. Cas studied him a moment longer, then perched himself primly on the bed edge before awkwardly swinging his legs up. 

Sam had never seen someone be so precise when getting into a bed. He wondered how often Cas had found himself performing the maneuver, before. Or maybe it was that the bed had other people in it. 

Charlie was the last of them, and had the courtesy to knock on the open door when she peered in. "Oh," she said, looking at Dean and Cas, the former now flopped on his back in the middle of the bed, the latter half-curled along the edge, both sleeping. "Puppy pile." She looked hopefully up at Sam. 

He wondered if this was how slumber parties went out in the real world. 

"Yeah," he said. "I guess we're all pretty rattled, tonight." He shifted to the very edge of the bed, making room for Charlie between himself and Dean, and watched her get settled, carefully lying down without touching any of them. Even on a king sized bed, four adults was a bit much, so Sam slipped off the bed and down to the floor, still covered in his flung pillows. He picked up his laptop and settled himself for a long, sleepless — morning. However long they all decided to sleep in his bed. 

Whatever Dean had said, Sam wasn't convinced that Crowley had actually left the bunker. He was willing to keep watch over the others, then, just in case the demon came back. And if anything else showed up — the spirit of a long dead relative, perhaps, out to drag Dean even further down the rabbit hole — Sam could watch out for that, too.

*

Dean only managed an hour or so before he found himself blinking awake, something unidentifiable setting off a warning deep in his brain. He was stretched out horizontally across the bed, his head aimed at the door, with Cas drooling on his shoulder and Charlie snuggled up in a ball against his back, one hand resting against Dean's side just below his ribs.

There were pillows _everywhere_. 

A minor war raged between Dean's hatred of touchy feely bullshit and how nice it felt to be wrapped up on both sides in warm people. His desire not to wake up either of his friends made the deciding blow for staying where he was. 

It helped that Sam was right there, too, sitting on the floor a few feet from Dean's head with the old Men of Letters journals laid out on the floor in front of him. 

"Hey." It was barely an exhale as he tried to keep from waking the others, but Sam heard him. 

"Dean," he said. "How are you not asleep?" 

"Could ask you the same thing." 

Sam hunched up, somehow managing to fold himself against the bed in a way that Dean hadn't seen since he'd first started bulking up after Dad died. "Seriously, dude." His voice was soft, almost casual, and he didn't look at Dean. "You need to sleep." 

"Can't." Dean closed his eyes with a sigh. They liked being closed. They _wanted_ to be closed. He hadn't realized how much his body had craved being horizontal until he'd laid down, and to have someone next to him, the heat of another person against his skin? 

That'd been so long he'd forgotten how to miss it. 

He wanted — so badly — just to sleep. But no matter what he tried. . . .

"Your brain won't shut up," Sam said, and Dean opened his eyes. Sam was looking at him like he'd never seen him before, like someone had come along and turned the world on its side and now suddenly Dean looked like a whole new person. 

Hell, he'd had the Men of Letters library catalog downloaded into his brain. Maybe he was a whole new person 

"It sucks," Sam said. "Doesn't it?" 

Dean grunted his agreement. "No wonder you're so neurotic." 

Sam snorted, shaking his head, and Dean congratulated himself on turning the world right side up again. 

"What do you do?" he asked, trusting Sam would know just what he meant. 

"Read," Sam said. "Something boring, or impenetrable. Take my brain out to the very edge and exhaust it." 

"Uh huh." Dean didn't buy it. "And how often does that work?" 

Sam laughed. "Not very," he admitted. "I have a couple other tricks. Deep breathing exercises, mostly. A couple meditation tricks I learned from Jess. Believe it or not, she was worse than me. But I'm kind of terrible at meditating." He looked back, and it seemed to Dean he could see all thirty years of exhaustion written in Sam's eyes. "So I learned to live on less." 

And wasn't that just the story of their lives? 

"Bull." Dean closed his eyes again. "You've been _really good_ at sleeping, lately." 

"Almost getting emptied out by mystical trials may seem like an extreme coping mechanism," Sam said. "But you can't argue with results." 

Dean surprised himself with a laugh. Charlie scowled, her hand fumbling to Dean's face and patting his mouth. 

"Shhh," she muttered, then: "Ew, baby, maybe you should try just bleaching your mustache instead of waxing, next time. You're all prickly." She snuggled harder into Dean's back. "I'll still love you, either way." 

Dean swallowed a snicker and opened his eyes against to see Sam doing the same. 

"It's good to know she wouldn't reject a woman just because of a little facial hair," Dean said. 

"Would you?" Sam asked. 

"Nah. Adds character." 

Cas shifted onto his back and started to snore. 

"Hey," Sam said, after several moments of the two of them just listening to their friends breathing. Dean didn't have to wonder how his brother knew he was still awake. "Do you suppose — I mean, after the church, when the angels were falling —" He stopped, and Dean couldn't bring himself to look for what expression he wore. "I was _dead_ , Dean. I mean, I was as close to it as I could be. And I was ready." 

"Sam —" 

"No, Dean. I was. I was so close to being done, and I wanted it. I wanted out." 

Dean swallowed. "What are you saying?" 

"I think the bunker brought me back. I think you bringing me here is what stopped it. What turned it around. Is that — possible?" 

Dean swallowed as the room took a sharp turn around him. Now that he knew it was there, now that it was confirmed, his mind reached for the reservoir of Men of Letters data without his conscious effort. He closed his eyes and that helped a little with the vertigo. It wasn't instant, the way it had been in the vaults, so close to the original glyphs that powered the whole bunker. Up here, surrounded by electricity and plastic and an ungodly number of sixty-year-old cans of spam, it took more reaching. 

"No." He kept his eyes shut and willed his body to relax into the mattress. "It doesn't have that kind of magic. You must not have been as ready to go as you thought." 

"Oh." The sound barely more than an exhale. 

Dean refused to feel bad. It wasn't really a lie. The sigils that boosted health and strength of those in the bunker were old and worn, lying up close to the waterfall. Their power had faded. He refused to believe they could have latched onto Sam, could have provided so much of a benefit, if his brother hadn't wanted it. 

And if denying they were there at all kept Sam alive, kept him _trying?_

Well, then. What was the harm in that?

*

Sam watched Dean lie still with his eyes closed until pretense gave way to reality, and he finally fell back asleep.

Dean was lying to him. Sam wasn't sure what always made Dean believe he could do that, that Sam wouldn't immediately see right through him. 

Sam always saw through him. It was only a matter of whether he wanted to believe whatever Dean said or not. 

The bunker _had_ brought him back. And Dean had somehow known to bring Sam back here after the church, instead of taking him to a hospital. 

Sam didn't want to be angry any more. He was _so tired_ of being angry. But Dean just kept on leaving Sam out of things, kept lying to him, kept trying to make Sam's decisions for him. It had to stop, but Sam was pretty sure it'd take one of them dying — really, actually, _permanently_ dying — for that to happen.

*

Between the Men of Letters library and Dean's fancy new magic book-finding powers, it didn't take much time to zero in on where Crowley had gone when he fled the bunker. Sam and Dean both tried to talk the others into staying behind in the bunker where it was safe, but only Kevin took them up on it. Cas looked like he wanted to. Whatever he'd gone through since their last phone call — and Dean would ask him about it, he would, just as soon as they had a moment free of hallucinations or unexpected info dumps or escaped Hell Kings — it hadn't exactly been full of feelings of warmth and safety.

And Cas had earned warmth and safety. Deserved it as much as anyone, probably more. Dean would lock both him and Sam up in the warmth and safety of his bunker if it weren't for the fact that he'd miss them so damned much on the road. 

Or the part where it was kind of really creepy that he thought of the place as _his personal bunker_ , where he was free to lock people up any time he pleased. 

In the end, Charlie was Cas's downfall. He seemed to have started looking to her for cues on how to be a non-Winchester human person, so when she put her foot down and did that glare-pout thing that Dean had absolutely no defense for, Cas stepped up to her side with little more than a longing glance towards the hallway to the bedrooms. 

Charlie folded her arms. "You guys aren't going out there alone." 

"We're professionals." Dean finished his inspection of the demon-killing knife and tucked it into the weapons duffel, next to his current favorite sawed off — and, okay, the scimitar from the library shelves. It wasn't magic, or anything, but it was fucking cool, and even Crowley wouldn't be expecting them to come after him with something like that. 

"So are we," Cas said. "I've trained with you in the art of hunting." 

"Yeah," Sam said. "For, like, one case." 

"You're powerless, Cas," Dean said. "You don't know what you're getting into as a human." 

"Sam's still injured," Charlie pointed out. "And you're letting him go." 

Dean glanced over at Sam, who despite his best efforts at moving smoothly and at full speed still wobbled and looked like he'd blend in with a stack of office paper. "Under protest," he said. 

"And how one hundred percent sure are you that you won't have another hallucinatory freak out while we're out there?" Sam asked. 

"He has a point," Charlie said. "You guys are both pretty wrecked. You need us." 

"I could drive," Cas offered, and Dean choked on his own reaction. 

"No. You're not driving." 

"But we are coming," Charlie said. "Do you want to test my shooting skills again?" 

"Cas can't fire a gun," Dean tried.

"I can wield a sword," Cas said. "I haven't lost those skills." 

"Better give it up, Dean." Sam was the most helpful little brother, _ever_. "I don't think they're going to take 'no' for an answer." 

"I should _definitely_ have just locked all of you in the vaults." Dean yanked the zipper shut on his duffel and swung it over his shoulder before heading for the door. 

". . . Wait." Sam came up behind him, Charlie and Cas most likely trailing not much further back. "You should have _what?_ "

*

Dean managed to space out on the "you can't just decide to lock your allies up when they irritate you" lecture on the way out of town. By the time they reached the state line, he was starting to space out on everything else, too. He held off as long as he could, but finally had to pull into the lot of a tiny gas station in the middle of what seemed like a thousand miles of empty fields and rows of trees. He ditched out of the Impala without a look back at Sam, who sat up from where he was slouched in the passenger seat, and nearly got creamed by Charlie, who'd been following in her little lime green MG with Cas. For all the space in the Impala's back seat, it always felt too crowded to Dean when they had someone in there.

He careened into the gas station's little market, actually bouncing off the door as he went, and found himself staring at a row of souvenir Mark Twain mugs. Fucking Missouri. (Mark Twain had been approached by a Men of Letters recruiter. He'd listened politely to the whole spiel, then in folksy, old-timey language, told the guy to fuck himself off a cliff.) 

"Dean?" Sam asked, suddenly behind him. (William Winchester, distant cousin to the gun manufacturers, had been the first of that family to be recruited to the Men of Letters in 1908, at the advice and insistence of young Esther Crumpacker. When challenged on her recommendation, Esther had simply smiled and said "you'll thank me, later.") 

The clerk made irritated noises when Dean stumbled into the mug display and caught himself on a rack of prepackaged fruit pies. Sam grabbed onto Dean's upper arm to help steady him, and Cas appeared not so much from nowhere as from the depths of unimportance on Dean's other side. (While believed by hunters to be entirely fictitious, angels were well-known to be real to the Men of Letters throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It is said that one of the founders of the society was visited by one such creature in 1793, prompting him to flee France ahead of the Reign of Terror and take up residence in Turin.) 

"Dean," Sam said again, taking Dean's chin in his hand and turning him to face him. Dean noticed how scared he looked, and opened his mouth to reassure him. (James Winchester III, nephew of William, joined Adelaide Winchester in following William's footsteps. While allowed to join and hold rank within the Men of Letters, women had to first be sponsored by a male relative of peer-age. There was talk of changing the rule in the early 1950s, but dissolution of the core of the Men of Letters society has prevented the rule change from happening.) 

_Stupid fucking rule_. 

Huh. That voice was new. At least Dean agreed with it. 

"Sammy," he managed. Cas took on more of his weight as his knees buckled. (Although no sightings of angels had been confirmed after 1795, the Men of Letters does have an angel's feather in its collection, the only known in existence upon the earthly plane until 2008, when legacies Samuel and Dean Winchester encountered the angels Castiel and Uriel in the days leading up to the aborted Apocalypse. The feather is kept in the Special Collections safe, Magical Reliquaries and Incendiaries division, storage room 6-B and has not been disturbed since 1945.) 

Shit. It was updating. 

"Dean?" Charlie was suddenly in front of him. Dean realized Sam and Cas had somehow gotten him back outside without his noticing; he was sitting on a bench by the side of the gas station lot. "Hey, you in there?" (Charlie Bradbury. Aka Carrie Heinlein, aka, Christine K. Le Guin, aka, Annie Tolkien, aka, Susan Asimov. Real name Middleton, first name unknown. Deemed unreplicatable by the leviathan Dick Roman. Men of Letters associate.) 

And then — miraculously — it shut up. 

It didn't know anything more about Charlie and her history than Dean did — less, even, since it apparently only cared about the Men of Letters and any tangentially associated supernatural forces. It couldn't info dump if it didn't have any info. Dean heaved out a sigh and leaned forward, letting his head dangle down for a moment between his shoulders. 

"That sucked." 

"What the fuck was that?" Sam asked. Dean winced, anticipating another slew of fun Winchester family facts, but the encyclopedia in his head must still have been stymied by Charlie, because it kept silent. 

_You're not supposed to wander off._

Dean ignored the second voice and pushed himself back upright. "The bunker," he said. "It's apparently mad that I left." 

"Dean," said Cas. While Sam and Charlie stood above Dean, looking down at him with worried frowns, Cas sat by his side on the bench, close enough that it would take no more than a few inches lean to touch shoulders with him. "I know it's your way to anthropomorphise the important objects in your life, but I don't think the bunker actually has feelings." 

Dean huffed, rubbing the back of his neck and trying not to squint in the sunlight. "The bunker's alive, dude. Trust me on that. It has a goddamn soul, and it doesn't know when to keep its goddamn mouth shut." He looked up at Sam. "You know our great-grandfather had to sponsor Emmay's kid into the Men of Letters? Apparently girls couldn't get in on their own merits." 

"Told you," Charlie said. "Totally sexist." 

"Rule still hasn't been changed," Dean said. "All those in favor of letting the women in?" He raised his hand, glancing over at Sam. 

"Uh," said Sam. "Aye?" 

"Ayes have it." Dean managed a smile up at Charlie. "Welcome to the club, sister." 

_Well done, cousin_ , the new voice said, and Dean really should have recognized it before. He blamed the crazy info dumping. 

_Hiya, Emmay. Don't suppose you can keep the fun-fact-athon at bay for awhile? We've got some stuff to do, here._

It was quiet for long enough that he thought maybe he was mistaken — maybe he'd just gone the rest of the way off the deep end — but then she spoke again. 

_I'll do my best. You really weren't meant to wander off._

"Yeah," Dean muttered. "That's gonna be a problem." 

"What?" Sam asked. 

"Not you." Dean dug into his pocket, then realized with a wince that he'd left the Impala's keys in the ignition when he stopped. "You up to driving?" 

"Dude." Sam held the keys up. Dean could have hugged him. "I was going to insist."

*

Sam watched Dean fumble in the glove compartment with one eye closed and the other squinted nearly shut, and waited. A series of cassette tapes went cascading to the floor, and Dean sent a series of curses after them. Sam waited some more. Eventually, Dean surfaced again with a pair of sunglasses Sam was almost certain hadn't actually been in the glove compartment before Dean went looking for them. "Dude," he said softly, recognizing an impending 'knowledge is being slammed repeatedly into my brain' headache when he saw one. "I don't think you've worn those since, what, New York? A decade ago? You were hungover after you spent the night pretending to be a TV producer."

Dean frowned, slouching down in his seat and slipping the sunglasses on. "New Paltz," he said. "Haunted painting." He hunched harder into the seat, curling into himself. "Fucking Sarah." 

Shit. Sam had forgotten that part. Not Sarah, he hadn't forgotten that they'd failed to save her. He'd forgotten that was _that_ case. It'd just been so long ago. Back before the angels, before every single case seemed to involve a demon they knew personally. Before they _knew demons personally_. Back when he and Dean were just brothers who hunted ghosts, looking for their lost father. When Sam was an idiot kid just learning how to love again after tragedy. When there was still a shred of _hope_ in their lives. "Yeah," he said, looking ahead, out at the little two-lane road they were on, then glancing in the mirror to check that Charlie and Cas were still behind them. "Fucking Sarah." 

They drove the next few miles in silence, Dean sinking further and further into the seat and his funk, Sam mainlining coffee and working harder and harder to keep his eyes on the road and not his brother. Hadn't he just caught himself kind of hoping Dean would go away? And now here he was, freaked out that Dean might manage to do exactly that, right in front of him. How was it possible to hate someone so much and love them even more in the same breath? 

"Sunglasses'll help," he said finally, the silence getting to him almost as much as the uncertainty. He was going to need more than caffeine to stay upright and functional on this drive. He was beginning to wish he'd tried harder to get enough sleep, the night before. "Especially with any light sensitivity. You should take something, too. I think there's some ibuprofen in the —" Well, not the glove compartment any more. "— Seat well." 

Dean grunted, and Sam realized he might've been trying to sleep and mentally cursed himself. "What?" Dean asked. 

"Headache, right?" Sam barrelled on, because what did Winchesters do, other than just keep going? "Your flashes of insight, or whatever you want to call them, I'm guessing they're not that different from my old visions. Comes with a hefty side of migraine." 

Dean shifted a little, pushing himself up until he was at least supporting the weight of his own head on top of his neck, instead of leaning it against the seat. "Kinda," he admitted. "Not so much back home. Out here . . . just keeps coming. Any fucking thing related to the supernatural kicks it off." He tapped his temple above the earpiece of the sunglasses. "Database is updating." 

Sam nodded. "Okay. So not just like my visions. Still. . . ." He trailed off, suddenly self-conscious. Dean turned his head, and Sam imagined him squinting from behind the dark lenses. 

"Spill it, Sam." 

"I just. . . ." He sighed, wishing a deer would jump out in front of the car, or Charlie would swerve around a turtle, or a meteor would strike, or _anything_ that would turn this conversation around. "I don't get to do this often." 

"Do what?" 

Sam shrugged. "Offer you advice." 

"That's a load of crap," Dean said. "You tell me shit all the time. Hell, sometimes I even ask you to." 

"About a case, sure. But not about _you_. Not about life, and dealing with shit. You're usually shouting orders at me or making decisions for me or just — staring. Man, we spend all our time throwing speeches at each other, but we don't really just _talk_." 

Dean was quiet long enough that Sam risked a glance over. Dean's eyebrow cut an arch that apexed halfway between the top of his sunglasses and his hairline. "About pain medication," he said. 

"About _stuff_. About headaches and coping mechanisms and ways to shut your brain off when you need to go to sleep. You know, you've never just asked me for advice on anything like that, before?" 

"That can't possibly be true," Dean said. 

"Never, Dean." Sam waited, shooting knowing glances at Dean whenever he could risk taking his eyes off the road. Dean was clearly thinking about it, looking for a counterexample, but he didn't offer a single one. 

"I'm the big brother," he said finally. "I'm supposed to be the one with all the advice." 

Sam shook his head and reached for his coffee again, managing a rueful grin. "Dude, I must've racked up at least a couple hundred years in the Cage. Pretty sure I'm older than you, by now." 

Dean scowled at him. " _Ow_ ," he said, grimacing. "What did I _just_ say about supernatural stuff kicking off headaches?" 

Sam's grin widened, determined to keep the tone light. "So we should keep talking about lifestyle management, then?" 

"Jesus." Dean shrank down in the seat again, folding his arms across his chest. "Wake me when we get to fucking Crowley." Then he grabbed his head and winced again, and Sam's grin vanished. Dean in pain wasn't funny. Not in the least. But just for a second there, they'd managed to just be _brothers_ , again. 

And, Sam realized, he wanted that more than anything else in the world.

*

They kept driving southeast throughout the rest of the day, pulling over for frequent breaks when Sam needed to rest his eyes, or someone needed to pee. Dean didn't even offer to take the wheel again, just stayed huddled in the passenger seat, occasionally taking sips of water when Sam shoved a bottle into his hands. Sam felt the tension in the car ratchet up higher and higher every passing hour, keeping him upright, his hands clenched on the wheel even as his body kept trying to drag him down. Whatever this distance from the bunker was doing to Dean, it got worse the further they got. Sam didn't want to think of what might happen if they pushed themselves too far.

At sundown, Sam pulled over one last time, behind a beaten up old farmhouse in rural Tennessee. Dean barely stirred as he got out, only rousing when Sam came around and knocked on the passenger side window. Sam resisted the urge to help him out of the car. Dean was clearly doing his best to keep his head as still as possible, making all his movements slow and stiff, and Sam was in no condition to be supporting anybody.

"You really should've taken something," Sam told him. 

"You really should shut your entire face," Dean said back in a growl. "Where the fuck are we?" 

Charlie had pulled up alongside them, and she and Cas were clearly wondering the same thing. "This doesn't look like Alabama," Cas said. Charlie kept it to a simple "Sam?" 

"This is far enough," Sam said. He didn't think he had to explain that neither he, nor Dean were likely to make it much further. "We'll do it here." 

Cas frowned. "You can't catch a demon if the demon isn't here." 

"Right," said Sam. "Which is why we're going to summon him." 

Dean groaned and sank his weight against the car, cradling his head in his hands. Sam walked around the car to open the trunk, leaning his own on one hand as he pulled out a bag of summoning supplies and a few cans of spray paint. Cas immediately moved in to take the bag, while Charlie took one of the cans and immediately started shaking it up. The movement looked practiced, casual. Somehow the idea that she'd spent some time tagging didn't surprise Sam in the slightest. "So. . . ." she said. "We paint this place up in devil's traps and summon him right into the middle?" 

"He's the King of Hell," Sam said. "We're going to need to be a little sneakier than that." 

"We hide the traps," Cas said. "And lure him in." 

Charlie frowned. "Hasn't that, like, almost never worked for you guys with Crowley?" 

Sam looked between them, swallowing down a sigh and wishing he had the energy to come up with a better idea — or a better argument. "Guys. Who's the experienced hunter, here? This'll work. We just have to be clever." 

"Yeah," Dean said, still slouching against the car. Sam had kind of thought he might be falling asleep, though he supposed that could be projection. "Or we could try something a little different." 

Sam tilted his head. "Dean?" 

Dean adjusted his sunglasses. The waning light made them a little ridiculous, but he wasn't pulling them off, just yet. Sam wondered what his eyes looked like, behind those lenses. How red they'd gotten. How dark the circles were. He barely croaked when he spoke, but at least he was getting involved in the conversation. He still had some spirit left in him. "I'm the new encyclopedia of weird, Sam." He smiled, looking grim and just a little crazy. "The Men of Letters have got the kinds of stuff Bobby would have shit his pants over. Trust me on this one." 

Sam looked down at the can of spraypaint in his hand. Dean had no way of dealing with all the information he was getting. It was so bad he couldn't _drive_.

"Call me crazy," Charlie said. "But I'm with creepy zombie Dean." 

"I'm not familiar with any effective traps that weren't collected or referenced in the Key of Solomon," Cas said. "But I was only a foot soldier. My knowledge of such things was not comprehensive." 

Dean waggled his eyebrows at Sam. 

He was so wrecked by all this he couldn't drive. But Sam hadn't yet seen a state short of unconsciousness keep Dean from hunting. "Yeah." He hefted the spray paint in his hand and slowly pushed himself to his feet, celebrating a minor victory when he managed not to sway. "Okay, we'll give it a shot." 

Dean adjusted his glasses. "That's my boy. What've we got to lose?" 

"Our lives?" Sam said. 

"What little ground we've gained in the battle between the astral planes and Earth," said Cas. 

"Hundreds of years of really thorough, obscure research into the occult," said Charlie. 

"I hate all of you." Dean pushed himself up off the car with no small amount of effort and grabbed the can of spray paint out of Sam's hands. "Let's go save all of those things."

*

Crowley made them wait for it, appearing at the edge of the large devil's trap they'd painted on the ceiling a good three minutes after the summoning finished. Sam honestly hadn't been sure the summoning itself would work — they usually used it on demons with less power than the deposed King of Hell. He'd mostly been banking on Crowley finding the attempt interesting enough to investigate. Between the delay and the smug look on Crowley's face, Sam was pretty sure he was right on that one. He edged closer to Dean on the other side of the devil's trap, every muscle tensed to hold himself firmly upright, as much as he wished he could lean against a wall, if not lie down on the floor. Cas and Charlie flanked him on either side, and Sam knew Charlie, at least, was braced to — try to — catch Sam if he went down. They were all careful not looking up or back at Dean.

Dean had stayed mostly silent since explaining his plan, standing hunched and pale off to one side while Sam reseted and Charlie and Cas worked. He still wore the sunglasses. Sam had tried teasing him with his line about the only people wearing them inside being blind or douchebags, but had gotten only a tight-lipped grimace in response. No wonder Dean hated it when Sam did that to him. Sometimes levity was the only thing that kept things from becoming unbearably heavy, and that expression just made the person making the jokes feel like an asshole. 

"Ah." Crowley spread his hands and smiled. "I knew you'd miss me." 

Sam waited a moment to see if Dean would respond, but there didn't seem to be any quip forthcoming. He straightened his shoulders, not sure enough of his own legs to try stepping forward, and did his best to loom over Crowley from across the room. "Terribly," he said. "You're coming back with us." 

"Tempting," Crowley said. "Counter-offer: no." He made a show of putting his hands into his pockets, emphasizing just how little a threat he found them. "What can I say? Your hospitality leaves . . . just a little something to be desired." 

"Who says you're getting a choice?" Charlie stepped up next to Sam. Sam winced, noticing how much firmer and more powerful her voice was compared to his own. He shot her a look — _I thought I told you guys to stay back_ — and got a little shrug/head wiggle combo in return that he was pretty sure translated to _this works better with two and Dean's not helping_.

Or maybe that was more projecting. 

"You boys brought friends!" Crowley started to pace, keeping to the edge of the room — and out of the devil's trap. "That's adorable." His steps were slow, measured, and pointedly casual. "Alright," he said. "I'll come back with the lot of you — on my own terms." 

"This isn't a negotiation," Cas said. He stepped up in front of Dean, who seemed content to continue to fade into the background. Sam tried not to think about how bad his headache must have been to make him do that. 

"Of course not!" Crowley said. "You all were never terribly good at those, were you? I thought maybe Squirrel's new found flashes of insight might help you out on that front, but I suppose some people just can't be taught." Sam tensed. Crowley smirked at him. "What, thought I wouldn't know? Locked away like you had me, far from all the interesting bits? I _built_ that spell, mate." 

Charlie raised a hand, half-pointing. "Wait, you made the Men of Letters spell?" 

Crowley stopped pacing, his eyebrows raised, and rocked back on his heels. "Well, of course. You don't think those Illuminati wannabes made it up themselves, do you? They couldn't spell their way out of a paper bag." 

Sam shook his head, then regretted it when the room tilted faintly to the left. "The Men of Letters _fought_ demons. They have more information on you than any other library on Earth." 

"Ah, yes, that library." Crowley grinned. "All that knowledge. That's the whole point, right? 'Preceptors, beholders, chroniclers'? They didn't even get into the field if they could help it, just gathered the intel. What was it they thought about hunters, again?"

Sam's jaw tightened and Crowley grinned wider. He started to pace again. 

"That's the thing about knowledge, though," Crowley said. "It's tempting. Addictive. Some men will do anything to get more. Will _trade_ anything. You have no idea the number of souls I've collected over the centuries in return for knowledge." 

"The spell's a deal," Cas said. Crowley tapped his nose and pointed at him, winking. 

"Got it in one, Feathers. One of my favorites. I was in a bit of a 'genie of the bottle' period at the time. Get your greatest wish, destroy your life. That was my first promotion, in fact. Did you children happen to get a chance to read up on the spell before you came rushing after me?" Sam glanced over at Charlie, then to Cas and Dean. Crowley was more than willing to take his silence as an answer. "I must admit, it was a stroke of genius to make the curse heritable. Took them ages to work out how to stave it off again. You know, most of them even thought the price was worth it. That amount of knowledge squeezed into one human brain killed every person who got the curse. Some of them lasted longer than others, of course, especially in the early days. But they just kept finding out _more_. And _more_. A secret society, centuries old, existing solely to gather more information. Just _think_ of how much there is for your dear brother to be processing, now." 

Sam looked back at Dean. The yellow glow of the lanterns they'd set up made him look almost green. He had his head bent forward, aimed at the floor. Sam thought he saw him sway. 

"I can fix that for you, you know," Crowley said. "Won't even charge you much. I could use a plucky young group of adventurers on my team against Abaddon." 

Sam's chest seized up. Of course, Crowley knew just where to hit. Sam had promised himself — had promised _Dean_ on more than one occasion — that they wouldn't throw themselves in the fire for each other anymore. But with Dean's insistence on stopping the trials, he'd put Sam above the entire world. The world wasn't quite being threatened here — yet — but Crowley was the master manipulator. If Sam sided with him to save Dean now, who knew where it would lead. 

Could Sam do what Dean couldn't? Could he watch a spell burn his brother up from the inside out? 

"Counter offer," Dean said, his voice a croak. "No." 

Crowley's eyebrows went up and he stopped pacing. Dean had waited just long enough to speak for Crowley to wander himself into position. He was paying more attention to what was going on than Sam had thought. 

"Pity," Crowley said. "And I won't even be around to watch your head literally explode." 

"Don't be too sure of that," Dean said. He tilted his head back, seeming to looking up. Crowley followed his gaze and rolled his eyes. 

"Oh no," he said. "A trap. Never would have seen that coming." 

"Not a trap." Dean nodded with his chin towards Crowley's shoulder and the graffiti scattered over the wall there. Including the symbol Dean had described to them as the last light of twilight faded. 

Crowley followed his glance, hand coming up as though to trace the strange, twisted figure. "What the hell is that?" 

"You know why knowledge is so addictive, right?" Sam said, starting to smile. 

"Pre-Enochian," Cas said. " _Very_ pre." 

"No," Crowley said. "I know all your little human tricks to trap me. You're distracting me." 

"No, that was what we were doing before," Sam said. 

"I told you," Dean said. "It's not a trap." He smiled almost lazily. "It's a suppression field." 

Sam felt a smile to match Dean's grow on his face. "Next to that, you're basically human." 

Crowley swiped his hand, a gesture that would normally send them all flying for the walls. This time, he didn't even manage to create a breeze. "A suppression field," he said. "I can walk out of it at any time, then." 

"Could," Charlie said. She'd used his focus on the men to pull a taser from her messenger bag. She aimed it at Crowley and pulled the trigger. He jerked, his head snapping back, and collapsed to the floor. "But won't." 

Cas came forward swiftly with the chains from the bunker. "How wide, exactly, is that field?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at the symbol. 

"Pretty wide." Dean slid his sunglasses up on his head. He looked exhausted, but not in any pain. "'Bout the size of the room." 

Sam frowned. "So when you walk out of here —" 

"Probably going to pass out," Dean said. "Pretty sure I'll get all the stuff it's been holding off at once." 

Sam swallowed, wondering how much longer his own reserves would hold up. He wanted to crash out here, spend the night before getting behind the wheel, but that would just put even more pressure on Dean when they finally left. "We'll get back to the bunker as fast as we can." 

Dean nodded, his smile weaker than it'd been when they were taking out Crowley. "I know." He half-turned, gesturing towards the door with his head. "Let's get this over with." 

He was thinking the same thing Sam was. The bunker made things easier, sure, but for how long? If what Crowley said was true, this spell was just another death sentence hanging over their heads.

**Chapter Seven**

Dean made it all the way to the car before collapsing, a trickle of blood running from the corners of both his eyes. Charlie was the closest to try and catch him, and she let out a little squeak of dismay when she saw the blood. Dean's weight took them both down pretty effectively, even with the side of the Impala to slide down, and Sam staggered his way over over just as Charlie was trying to prop him back up against the door. "Sam," she said. "His eyes. . . ."

"It'll be alright," Sam told her, wishing he was as certain as he sounded. "It's actually not the first time that's happened." 

Charlie made a face, then propped Dean carefully against the car Sam got the rear doors open. He had to sit down himself while he waited for Cas to emerge from the farmhouse with Crowley, awake again, and spitting mad and impotent in the chains. Of course, Dean hadn't thought to stay in the range of the suppression field until after they got Crowley all loaded up. That wouldn't be nearly as dramatic an exit. 

Fucker. 

They set new ground-speed records in the Impala on the drive back to the bunker, making the trip that had taken them all day on the way out in just under eight hours. Sam had to let Charlie drive, a fact that niggled at him under his skin. Still, though, a non-Winchester behind the wheel was better than an exploding head or the Impala wrapped around a tree. Sam promised her they'd come back for her car as soon as they could, but she didn't seem too worried about it. Since it was the second car he'd seen her own in only a few years of knowing her, he supposed he shouldn't be too surprised. 

Cas offered to drive either of the cars. No one wanted to take him up on it. 

They pulled up into the bunker's garage not long after sunrise. Sam leaned over Dean's prone form in the back seat, wondering if he should try to shake him awake. Dean hadn't stirred the entire time. He still didn't, not even when Sam heaved him up into a fireman's carry and started for his room. Charlie and Cas both protested, almost dancing around him as they tried to offer to support him, or carry Dean for him, but he refused. This part, he had to do. This part he would do even if it took the very last ounce of his strength. 

No one was going to carry Dean but Sam. 

He tried to remember the last time he'd had to carry him like this. It'd happened more than a few times, he knew — at least as many as Dean had had to carry him — but the only one he could remember was after Lilith, all those years ago, when Dean's blood had slowly seeped its way down the back of Sam's shirt, moving only with the force of gravity. Sam shoved the thought as far away as he could and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as he made his way through the halls. Maybe Dean was right. Maybe Sam did need to learn to turn his brain off, sometimes. It certainly wasn't helping him much now. 

He considered dropping Dean off in his room, with the king size bed and the mountain of pillows, since it was that much closer to the garage, but decided to make it the last twenty feet to Dean's. Sam hadn't put any effort into decorating his room or making it his own, and not just because the trials hadn't left him any time to "nest". Dean was in bad shape, and any little bit of warmth and comfort had to help. Sam barely managed not to drop him onto the mattress. His arms felt like slack rope, limp and frayed; his legs weren't much better. He stepped back, breathing hard, and had to swallow back saliva and bile as his body protested all the extra effort. 

Dean didn't even grunt. He didn't shift or groan or crack his eyes open and curse like he normally would when he was injured and finally somewhere he could express it safely. He didn't move at all. It just wasn't right. 

"You want me to get some of the pillows?" Charlie asked. Sam looked over, only just realizing she'd followed him the whole way in. Her eyes looked sunken. Sam wondered when the last time she'd driven that long had been. 

"Nah," he said, his voice barely a croak. "Pretty sure he won't notice, either way. You look awful, by the way." 

"You're a charmer." She punched him in the arm — or tapped him with her fist, at least. He appreciated that she didn't try to tell him how terrible he must've looked. "Guess the life of a hunter doesn't leave room for a lot of naps, huh?" 

"You're not a hunter," Sam said. "Don't you remember? You're a Woman of Letters. We voted you in officially." 

"Then I propose a motion," she said. "To revise the bylaws to acknowledge that 'People of Letters' and 'hunters' aren't mutually exclusive." 

"It's practically a coup." Sam smiled tiredly. "I second the motion." He looked at Dean. "I guess we've already got a majority rule." 

"Not yet." Charlie aimed another tap at his shoulder. Sam really hoped that wasn't just how hard she punched. "We're still down two members." Sam frowned and she groaned. "Cas and Kevin, duh." 

"Oh." Sam hadn't even thought about including them. Charlie was the one who'd expressed interest in joining. "Yeah, I guess they should count, too." 

"They're practically living here," Charlie said. "And I'm pretty sure Kevin has left this place even less than you have, in the last few weeks." 

"I'll ask them," Sam said. "Another new bylaw, if it's not one already: membership is open to residents, but not compulsory." 

"A real coup," Charlie said. "Where did Cas go, anyway?" 

Sam shook his head. "I thought he was with you. I wasn't really paying attention to anything but. . . ." He trailed off, staring in at his brother. Dean still hadn't moved. 

Charlie's tap was open handed this time. A pat, he decided, not a smack. "He'll be okay." 

"You have no way of knowing that." 

"Sure I do. We'll paint that symbol in his room if we have to." 

Sam laughed painfully. "Yeah, because he'll love being stuck just in here." 

"As step _one_ , doofus," Charlie said. She looked at Dean, smiling faintly. "We can't give up. He wouldn't give up on any of us. Even if we wanted him to." 

"It's his most obvious and irritating flaw." 

"If he was my girlfriend, I'd find him creepy and codependent." 

"You should try him as a brother." 

When Charlie touched him again, it was with her whole body, shoulder, arm, and hip, as she gave him a sideways hug. "Doofus," she said.

*

Dean's unconsciousness was usually an empty hole, a perfect void inside his head, as though any thoughts or memories had been knocked clear out of him by whatever put him out. Of course, that "whatever" was usually blunt force trauma, or maybe the occasional electric shock. This more closely resembled his run in with the vampire alpha, back when he was briefly among the fanged. Except while those images hadn't made a hell of a lot of sense, they'd at least been recognizable images. Rapid fire and obscure, sure, but you spent enough time around the supernatural, and you started to get used to rapid fire and obscure. If the alpha's message had been a flood, this wasn't even a tsunami. This was fucking God's revenge, clearing out the Earth of sinners and idolaters. This wasn't even Noah territory; in that story, there were survivors. In this one, Noah drowned with the unicorns and God electrocuted all the whales.

It went on like that for a long damned time, image over thought through factoid all at once, all important, until they blended into a jumbled roar. Dean had three thousand wikipedias slamming into his head every second. It didn't even hurt. 

He didn't have the brainpower to spare on "hurt." 

And then, suddenly, it slowed. It didn't stop — stopping at that speed was impossible, anyway — but it slowed, until Dean only had sight and sound jumbled together, until the narrator stopped sounding like the floor of the UN. Until he could very nearly think his own thoughts past the flow of outside information coming in. He felt warm, he noticed, like he'd been swaddled tight in a blanket. It smelled clean, like soap and vinegar, and a quiet background murmur tickled his ears. 

He was home. 

That explained the stemmed tides. The safeguards put in place to block Crowley's curse were old, poorly maintained and almost worn through, but still functional, if only barely. They couldn't stop the spell entirely, had never been able to, not until the Men of Letters had walled up the vaults with the last victim inside, comatose and buried beneath the central cavern floor. Dean wondered why they hadn't thought to put a warning on the door. Or who — or what — had unlocked it for him. 

Still, the old Men of Letters hadn't been totally useless. Their magics did help slow the flow down a little. Maybe just enough for Dean to surface. The murmur grew louder as Dean fought the weight on his limbs and for the barest moment he thought he could even open his eyes. He saw a flicker of _bedroom_ , with a side of giant sasquatchian silhouette in the doorway, and he nearly got out a whole word — "Sam," what else? — before he was dragged under again. 

He fought his way up, willed himself to _move_ , his hand, a fucking _finger_ , and got another shutter flash of bunker. His throat clenched. He couldn't move. He couldn't wake up. Sam had only just gotten over the worst of the trials and he couldn't move — 

His eyes opened, just slits, enough to make out light but no color. Two women stood and argued above him — around him — within him. He hadn't opened his eyes; he'd opened the bunker's. 

They were in the vaults, the large, arching front room, only instead of dust it was filled with books. Books on shelves, book in boxes, books stacked up to the ceiling. Enormous hardbound books with worn covers, folios the size of posters, even a collection of flaking scrolls. The Men of Letters library, or part of it, shipped from Turin to Kansas just ahead of the outbreak of war. And the women — The women — 

This wasn't right. Emmay's sacrifice predated the movement of the library. She couldn't be there with the books, not with her flesh on. Or perhaps a bunker's memories were like a person's, all jumbled up together. 

"I don't want to see this place change," said the woman with Emmay, younger by at least a dozen years, a short and circular blonde with rosy cheeks not suited to an underground lair. _Esther_ , Dean thought, and he couldn't be sure if it was knowledge or a guess. 

"You hate it here," said Emmay. "You're a city girl at heart." 

"It's grown on me." Esther laid a hand on the nearest stack of books, and Dean had to wonder again about the timelines. "Are they horrible?" 

"Who?" 

Esther gave Emmay a look, the sort perfected, it seemed, by teenagers across the ages. "The Italians," she said, and though it was a good 80 years away from her vocabulary, Dean heard the "duh" on the end, loud and clear. 

"How should I know?" Emmay asked. "I'm from Chicago." 

"I bet they're horrid," Esther said. "They're the ones who made all the rules. The ones obsessed with death and dust." 

"And you're the one who arrived on our doorstep, raving about angels."

Esther sighed. "It's not the same here any more," she said. "There are too many men, and all Will does is mope." 

"I know," Emmay said. "I'm sorry." 

"Why won't you show yourself to him?" 

Dean stiffened. The unfamiliar light of the gas lamps had thrown him. He could see now how much paler Emmay was than Esther, the way she blurred faintly at the edges. Damned faker. She was no death echo.

Or, at least, this part of her soul wasn't. 

"My time with William is done," Emmay said. "It should never have happened to begin with. The Winchesters are a dangerous family, Esther, do not mistake it. They don't mean to be, but they'll end us in ruin." 

"You goddamn liar," Dean said. "You called me a good omen." 

Emmay turned and looked straight at him. "At the time I thought you were." 

Esther vanished. The books turned to stone book statues and crumbled. 

"The sigil," Dean realized. 

"A suppression field," said Emmay. "You should be able to wake up soon." 

"You're not a dream." 

She shook her head. 

"How are you here?" 

"I'm a Winchester, too," she said. "I have been longer than I was ever a Moore. We don't do 'suppression'." 

"So which is it, 'cousin'?" Dean slowly circled her. "Are we great or are we terrible?" 

"We're human," she said. "Maybe even more than most. That makes us both." 

"So this is it? You hit me with a curse, haunt my dreams, and I get to spend the rest of my life in a magic bubble?" 

"You're very dramatic," she said. "You get that from William's side." 

"Stuff it. Answer the question." 

"I didn't do this to you. I had no idea when I cast that spell that it would expose you to the curse." 

"You didn't try to stop it." 

"I couldn't." Emmay scowled, her hands in fists at her side. "You have to believe I would have if I could. The past is immutable, and when I brought you back, you became part of it. I watched my friend die of this plague. I can only hope that you and yours will finally end it." 

"Your friend?" Dean asked. 

"Richard." She sank to the ground, her skirt pooling around her, and sifted the dust from the floor through her fingers. "He was the most senior after me. The Men of Letters were nothing if not hierarchical, and their curse could only be the same."

"That's why it hit me." 

"You're the oldest of your new group," Emmay said. "With the longest legacy." She looked up at him, her eyes bright. "And it is long, Dean. Moores _and_ Winchesters. Long and strong and so proud." 

"So when I go," Dean said, shrugging off the thoughts that swarmed him, curiosity about his family's history. His mind's new instinct to reach beyond itself into the curse for answers to all his questions. "Sam'll get it next." 

"Not if you fix it." 

Dean shook his head. "Seems like every time my brother and I fix something, we break something else even worse." 

"Then maybe it's time to change your methods." Emmay turned over her wrists, showing deep wounds leaking black. Her lips curled up in an ironic smile, traces of Sam at his most sarcastic in every line. "I think you'll find our family has sacrificed enough. So, please, try not to kill anyone while you're at it." 

The vault blurred, taking on a glow around the edges. Dean tried to blink. 

Emmay smiled. She smelled like Sam, too. 

"Come on, Dean," she said. 

Sam smelled like chalk dust. Dean tried to blink. 

"It worked," said Charlie. 

"Good," said Sam, and Dean's entire body shook as his brother collapsed across his bed, his weight too much for even memory foam to absorb completely.

*

Sam woke up 17 hours and 47 minutes later. Dean might've been able to get it down to the second, except the old alarm clock on his nightstand only counted minutes and hours. He set his book aside — even he could only watch internet porn for so long, especially with his brother passed out next to him — and looked over. "Welcome back."

Sam peered blearily up at him from where his face was still smashed into a pillow. Dean had a few of those, again. Charlie had grabbed them from the floor of Sam's room after they determined that, no, no one would be dragging Sam's giant ass back to his own bed. Dean watched the disorientation and confusion drain out of his brother's eyes as he slowly caught up on what was happening. "Shit," he grumbled. 

"Uh huh." 

"Your room?" 

"Uh huh." 

"Passed out." 

"Well." Dean reached over and clapped Sam a few times on the shoulder. "That's what happens when you carry a grown man around after you've been awake for two days. Especially when you're still not completely recovered from _mystical trials trying to burn your soul clean_."

Sam shrugged Dean's hand off, rolling onto his side and rubbing one hand down his face. "Right," he said. "Next time I'll let Kevin carry you." 

"Charlie's a better threat," Dean suggested. "She's a little shorter." 

Sam made it onto his back and slowly sat up. "Were you watching me sleep?" 

"Don't get all gooey," Dean said. "Didn't have a whole lot of options." He nodded to the wall by the door, where the suppression sigil was scrawled in chalk. "Think you guys drew it large enough?" 

"Cas did it," Sam said. "He remembered it the best. I think he wanted to make sure it would reach the whole room." 

"Well, his mission succeeded," Dean said. "I can now navigate my entire twelve foot cube of a room without my head exploding." He tried to keep it light, to keep the way he was itching under his skin from showing. Caged tiger metaphors sounded badass in theory, but they worked best when they weren't referring to a guy in an _actual cage_. 

"We'll figure something else out," Sam said. "The Men of Letters figured out how to block it, before, right? So we know there's a way. This is just a temporary measure." 

"Yeah," Dean said. "That's what Emmay said. Except apparently the solution last time was to bury the cursed guy alive and seal him up in a massive tomb." 

Sam frowned, but apparently decided not to ask. "Cas said he had an idea — that _doesn't_ involve you being buried alive, thanks for that image — but he didn't tell us what it was. Said he had to get some things organized." 

"From his vast network of non-vengeful angel contacts?" Dean asked, wishing he could feel anywhere near as hopeful as Sam sounded. Sam scowled at him. "Relax. I'm good. I've got plenty of books. Bought some of 'em myself, even." He tapped the stack of science fiction on his nightstand. At the bottom was the copy of _It_ he'd bought Sam. That one alone would probably take him at least a couple weeks to get through. 

Sam tilted his head, doing that _I can see through you_ look that he was so good at. Dean decided to try ignoring it.

"You don't have to pretend not to be scared, Dean." 

Ignoring never worked. 

"Who's pretending?" he asked. "I'm fucking terrified. I barely got through three weeks of just running to town every couple of days. And what the fuck am I supposed to do if I have to go to the bathroom?" He paused, actually curious to see if Sam had an answer to that one that didn't involve a bucket. 

Sam winced. 

Great. 

"I finished the panic attack about it sixteen hours ago. You were out pretty hard, so you missed it. Kevin said he'd loan me some jars." 

"He's not pissing in — Dean." 

"You're damned right he's not pissing in Dean." 

Sam's scowl had turned into a full-fledged glare. "Stop it." 

"Stop what?" 

"You think I don't know exactly how you feel right now?"

"What, stuck in bed?" Dean shrugged, honestly not sure what had his brother all riled, this time. "Of course you do. I just mentioned our whole three-week stint. At least you could drag your ass to the toilet when you had to. Well. Eventually." 

"Not just that," Sam swung his legs off the side of the bed so his back was to Dean and leaned his elbows on his knees. He still looked exhausted. Dean tried to remember the last time he'd seen Sam bright and full of energy — and failed. 

That was too bad; being tired always made Sam extra cranky. 

"I mean all of it," Sam said. "The lack of control. Never knowing when it's going to knock you on your ass." 

"You mean your vision things." 

Sam's back tensed, then slowly relaxed, from the top of his spine down. "Yeah, Dean. Those, too." 

"Demonic power? Knowledge slammed into your head? It's pretty fucking on the nose, Sam." 

"Locked in a room?" Sam half turned, looking over his shoulder at Dean. "Shuffled around 'for your own good'?" 

Dean felt cold. "What are you getting at?" 

The look on Sam's face was half smile, half grimace. He had the gall to even look apologetic. "I'm getting at my entire life, Dean. With the exception of — of Amelia — I haven't had one moment of my life that was my own. I've been led around by the nose by Dad, by Ruby, by all the demons Azazel sent to try to make sure I shaped up right when I went off to college." He stopped there, swallowed. Dean narrowed his eyes. 

"No, go on." He crossed his arms. "Say it." 

"By you." 

"You think I manipulated you." 

"Not maliciously." Sam shrugged. "But — yes. You did. You do." 

Dean pushed himself up off the bed, pacing the three feet to the wall with the sigil. He could feel its influence, this close, like a cool breeze under his skin. "I'll give you the demons. That's what they do." He turned around, putting the sigil at his back. "I'll even give you Dad, though from my angle, he gave you every fucking thing you ever asked for." 

"Are you _kidding_ me?" 

Dean plowed on, barely listening. He felt like this argument had been lurking around them for years, without ever resolving. He wanted to finish having it, once and for all.

Before he most likely ended up dead for real. Forever. 

"When have I ever tried to stop you, huh? You tell me you want to leave, and I let you go. I never tried to follow you. Not to college, not back when you wanted to go after Dad alone, not _any_ of the other times you decided you had enough of me." 

"Yeah, Dean, and you give me hell for it at _every_ opportunity." Sam stood, facing him from the other side of the bed, his hands spread. "How many times have you lied to me, huh? 'For my own good'? How many times have you thrown my mistakes in my face, left me out of the loop because you were pissed at me?" 

"Really? This is about Benny again?" 

"No!" Sam threw his hands into the air. "It's not about _Benny_ , Dean, it's never been about Benny. It's about you punishing me for trying to find a life for myself." 

"You _left_ me in _Purgatory!_ "

" _I thought you were dead!_ " 

Dean stared across at Sam, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. Sam glared back just as hard. Both of them had curled their hands into fists. 

Dean broke first. 

He turned back to the wall again, barely stopping his fist from hitting it right in the middle of the heaviest chalk swirl in the center of the sigil. "You need to leave," he said. 

"You're kicking me out?" 

"Well, gosh, Sam, I'd storm out myself, but then my head would explode." He turned just enough to see his brother in his peripheral vision. Sam's expression was empty, like Dean had just pulled out the drain plug on him. It felt satisfying and terrible in equal measure, and Dean gave the wound between them one last poke for good measure. "That would be 'manipulative'." 

Sam's face refilled, his cheeks actually flaring red as he ground his teeth. "Fuck you, Dean." He stomped around the bed. Dean thought for a moment he was about to get hit, but Sam just went to the door, pausing on the threshold. "I thought, just for a moment, that maybe you'd finally _listen_ to me. But no, I'm still just your idiot little brother." 

Dean wanted to deny that. Sam hadn't been his idiot little brother since — 

His voice caught in the back of his throat. 

Shit. 

Sam was right. 

He must've paused too long, because Sam just shook his head and left the room. Dean tried to follow, making it as far as swinging partway through the door before the vertigo hit, and the collected knowledge of the Men of Letters started elbowing its way into his head again. He heaved and swung back again, leaning heavily against the doorjamb as he watched Sam go. 

"Sammy," he managed. 

Sam waved his hand without turning around, too pissed off, or maybe just not willing to pay anymore attention. "I'll get you some jars," he said as he turned the corner into the library. Dean pushed off the door and stumbled back to his bed. 

Jesus. He'd pretty royally fucked this up. And now he couldn't even chase Sam down and make him listen. 

Story of his goddamn life.

*

"The Men of Letters were weird," Kevin said, after his second day working on translating Esther's journals.

"Well, yeah," Sam said. "I mean, I figured that out just by taking a look at this place." 

Kevin shook his head. "This stuff is a little out there," he said. "But it's not _weird_. This is just, like, the Batman stuff. The tech and gadgets and training and books to fight the bad guys. The stuff downstairs? The research they were doing? They actually experimented with basilisk spit in the late nineteenth century. On _werewolves_." He tapped one of the pages in the journal. "And that's only the background action in here. Esther's too busy getting into who's dating who in the Men of Letters hierarchy." 

"Why was she so obsessed with people's love lives?" 

"How should I know? She mostly sticks to two families, at least." 

"Winchesters and Campbells?" Sam guessed. It made sense: if Esther was a prophet, she could have been cluing into the angel bloodlines. And with the Men of Letters being active as long as they were, there was no way they hadn't crossed paths with the Campbell hunters at least a handful of times. 

"Nah, Campbells and Moores. The name Winchester doesn't even show up until William joins up in 1908." 

"Moore." Sam reached over to take the book from Kevin. He tried to skim the page, but half of it was in Cyrillic. "Mary Annabelle was a Moore." 

"And a legacy," Kevin said. "The Moores were one of the founding families in the English speaking branch." 

Sam shook his head. "English speaking _branch_. How was the whole organization wiped out by Abbadon so quickly if there were _branches?_ " 

"World wars," said Kevin. "Esther predicts unrest in Europe decimating the other branches. It's part of why they made this place the center of operations. Apparently, they barely even made it across the ocean. Only two guys survived the last boat trip, and one of them keeled over on the train out here." He pressed his fingers to a page and grimaced. "He, uh. Bled out from his eyes and ears. Apparently, he was the 'Center' of his era."

"Center," Sam repeated. 

"Of knowledge." 

"Jesus." There was so much here to discover, to absorb, and not just about the curse. Of course, most of it was written in languages only Kevin — and apparently, at least a little, Cas — could read. And what was with the Jess connection? Sure, Dean had pointed out it wasn't exactly a rare last name — the total opposite, in fact. It was a little bit like being shocked he encountered more than one person named "Smith". But what if it wasn't a coincidence? What if the Moore family was the original Michael bloodline? 

Had Jess been a potential vessel? Was that part of why Azazel had had her killed? 

Was Sam _ever_ going to find the bottom of the holy conspiracy that was his and Dean's entire existence? 

"Have you talked to him?" Kevin asked. Sam swallowed a sigh. 

"Dean?" As though Kevin would believe for a moment that Sam didn't know who he meant. "He doesn't really do 'talking'." 

"Are you kidding?" Kevin closed the journal and set it aside, giving Sam a look like he was the stupidest person Kevin had ever met. Funny, Sam had thought only Dean could manage that expression. "That's like all he does." 

"He doesn't do talking _to me_ ," Sam said. "Not without a hunt and a beer at the side of the road. Besides." He shook his head. "He doesn't want to see me." 

"What, because he kicked you out? Didn't you accuse him of trying to control you?" 

"Kevin —" Sam cut himself off, not sure what he could say that would make the kid — a fucking teenager, Jesus, Kevin was _so young_ — understand. 

"I get it," Kevin said. "He's like your mother. He's spent your whole life trying to look out for you, and even though you know he can't do that forever, that you've gotta go out and do shit and screw up for yourself, he hasn't figured it out, yet." 

Sam stared at him. It wasn't that the idea of Dean as a mother figure had never occurred to him before. It wasn't exactly hard to see. Dean was the quintessential helicopter parent. 

He'd never thought of Dean as being like _Kevin's_ mom, before. 

Mrs. Tran was a fucking force to be reckoned with. She didn't put up with anyone's shit, and she'd taught her son to do the same. 

Dean wasn't a helicopter. He was a tiger. 

Which didn't make it any less smothering. 

"Maybe you should talk to him." 

"Are you kidding?" Kevin said again with a roll of his eyes. "That's like trying to walk repeatedly into a brick wall." 

_So spake the prophet_ , Sam thought. 

He was screwed.

*

It took weeks.

Charlie started out scribbling chalk sigils on every surface she could find, trying to clear more safe space for Dean, but once he had an established path to the bathroom and back, he told her to stop. He wasn't 100% on just what the rules and limitations of the sigil were, and the last thing they needed was it somehow canceling out the layers of masking and protection overlaying the entire bunker. Or the healing spell that, faded as it was, Dean was sure was still a significant part of what kept Sam on his feet. 

He'd thought that sticking close to the bunker while Sam was convalescing was hard. It was nothing compared to being stuck in his room — or the hall or the bathroom, thankfully — under threat of madness and death. He didn't even let anyone put the sigil up in the library. And if they put it there, anyway (which, let's face it, was freaking likely), he wasn't about to go find out. The library was the very heart of the Men of Letters and as such it contained some of the most powerful sustaining magics, including the ones that kept the place clean and dry. Climate control wasn't exactly cheap and easy in the era in which the place had been built. The very thought of what the humidity coming in from the broken skylight in the observatory could do to all his books made Dean shudder. 

And then curse himself, because the hell? He wasn't supposed to be the one who worried about maintaining the books. 

The days blurred together quickly. Cas checked in occasionally about his cunning plan: to have the sigil engraved onto necklaces for each of them. Apparently, he was having trouble finding a seller on Etsy who could handle the design. And now Dean knew what "Etsy" was, which was not something he'd ever expected to need to know. Of course, they didn't actually know how large the thing had to be to be effective, or if size had any effect on its range at all. Dean could find out, but it'd require walking out of his safety zone, and frankly, he wasn't really looking to have his head explode — or his brain liquify, or whatever other gruesome effect the curse would ultimately have — just yet. 

Instead, he watched every decent movie Netflix had to offer, then several more that Charlie helped him hunt down on the rest of the internet. He read all of the novels he'd picked up at the bookstore, including that goddamn _Fifty Shades of Grey_ — which he was absolutely sure now had to have been written by a demon. Sam brought him more books, longer books, harder books, and he breezed through those as well, before turning the tv back on. By the end of the month, he'd caught up on Telemundo and resorted to watching decades worth of old episodes of British soap operas. 

They weren't any closer to a permanent solution. 

Dean was lying on his bed, headphones on, staring at the ceiling when it happened. It was what he did when he'd had enough of staring at the television or a book, when he'd calistheniced himself into physical exhaustion, and there was no one else in the immediate vicinity to entertain him. He used to be able to lie still and listen to his music for hours. Now he got antsy after only a few songs. Sam had neglected to mention this part of the active-brain problem, how it made it so much harder to just be where you were. To wait. How the hell had Sam managed all that time stuck in his room after the trials? 

Oh, right, he slept through most of it. 

Dean sighed, tried to force his feet not to twitch, and failed. Thought of bending his knees, decided against it — then did it anyway, because once he got started thinking about it, he couldn't stop, and his legs started to cramp up. 

Something rushed past his door, too fast to make out. A flicker of black blur, like a spectre in a movie. Dean froze, waited to see if it would return. 

He hadn't hallucinated since his last trip down into the vaults, since he'd been forced to embrace the knowledge curse. He glanced over at the sigil, now painted in black over the original chalk lines. Did it somehow expire, like old milk? 

He reached up slowly, pulling his headphones down off his ears, and listened. 

There were four other people — five, if you included captive demons — living in the bunker, at least one of them home at any given time. It was _never_ this quiet. He set the headphones aside, sidling up to his door and picking up the nearest weapon — his makeshift blade from Purgatory, interesting choice — as he went. The bone felt cool and welcoming in his hand. 

The hallway was empty. 

Dean felt heat, like stacked, smoldering coals, build its way up his back. His shoulders settled; his neck felt longer, his head clear. The sigil was working. Something was loose in the bunker, his friends and family were in trouble, and he felt like _himself_ for the first time in so, _so_ long. 

He adjusted his grip on the Purgatory blade and stepped out into the hall. "Sam?" he called, body tensed for an attack. 

Nothing. 

His search routes were limited. He turned down the hall towards the bathroom, passing the kitchen — and the secret door to the vaults — on the way. The secret door was closed, the floor faintly scuffed in front of it. As far as Dean knew, no one had opened it since the night they went exploring. The kitchen was empty, save for a few coffee cups left out on the table to mold over. Jesus. How was he the only one trying to keep this place clean and uncluttered? 

The figure had moved in the other direction, towards the library, so Dean took his time along the hallway, looking for clues as to its identity, or where Sam and the others had ended up. He kept a wary eye on his six, turning every few steps to scan behind him, and was giving the hall one such glance when he turned into the bathroom — and tripped over someone on the floor. 

Kevin. 

Dean crouched silently, holding his blade away from Kevin's body, and reached over to feel for a pulse. Just unconscious. Dean could see a lump starting to form at Kevin's hairline. He must've been taken out after a shower; his hair was still wet. Dean shook his foot, watching his face for a reaction, but Kevin didn't stir. Dean stood, grabbed a towel, and folded it up to put under Kevin's head. 

He had more people to find. 

He started back down the hall to his room, pausing to look into Sam's on the way. Empty. He wondered what he'd do when he reached the end of his little sigil-lined path. Stepping outside of its influence was a debilitating headache if he was very, very lucky. He walked up to the very edge of the sigil's range and felt the bunker tickling at the edges of his brain. He adjusted his grip on his blade, holding it up and looking it over before looking back towards the library. The angle was completely wrong to see more than light and shadow. Someone — or something — was moving around in there, but Dean couldn't make out who it was or what they were doing. 

"Sam?" he called. "That you?" 

Silence. 

He was trapped. Something had attacked Kevin, maybe taken out Cas and Charlie. Sam was nowhere to be found. His only option was to try to goad whatever was in the library into coming after him in the hallway, where they would both have a limited range of movement. And if the thing got away into the unsigiled areas again, it'd be free. Why the hell wasn't he carrying around chalk? He could at least increase his range that way, though having to stop and draw another sigil on the wall every twenty feet or so would get old real fast. If he wanted to move quickly — and in this job, he always wanted to move quickly — he had to do it without the assistance of his magic little squiggle friend. He either had to risk the headache — and the possible actual head explosion — or go back to his room and hope that Sam had a handle on things. 

Sam was a great hunter. He could handle himself in a tight situation. He didn't need Dean swooping in all the time to rescue him. Probably didn't want Dean around, anyway, not the way Dean had been treating him lately. They'd been silent treatmenting each other since the argument after they got back from recapturing Crowley. The last thing Sam would want was Dean swooping in to his rescue, especially if said swoop got Dean killed. 

But if Sam got killed and Dean didn't even try to do anything about it? That couldn't happen. They'd both always known that. If Dean had to die so Sam could live, Dean wouldn't even hesitate. 

Except that he was. 

What would Dean's head exploding get Sam in this case? Dean would just be dead, and Sam would still be in trouble, with no possible cavalry available to ride in at the final moment. There had to be another way. 

Dean leaned against the wall at the edge of the sigil's range and poked at the fuzzy, ticklish sensation of the magic border. The accrued Men of Letters knowledge was a curse. Their research over the last few weeks had confirmed what Crowley had said: every person who'd fallen under it had died young and bloody, overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of it. The full weight of the curse had basically put Dean in a coma for a day, last time he left the sigil's influence. 

But did it have to work that way? Cas had tried talking to Dean about meditation, though Dean had basically just blown him off. He'd made some good points, about the things that Sam and Dean had both had to deal with already, beyond the scope of any "normal" human, and how they'd made it through intact. Mostly. 

Emmay flickered into existence just inside the library. She blinked slowly at Dean, then lifted her chin. _Winchesters find a way,_ she'd said. Usually by charging straight through it like a bull. 

Dean narrowed his eyes, tipping his head to the door. She nodded slowly. He tapped his temple with the thumb of the hand still holding the Purgatory blade, then mimed his head exploding. She shook her head, then looked pointedly at the library. Dean swallowed, then nodded back. He braced himself and stepped out of the sigil's range. 

The flood gates opened. 

Instead of standing still in front of them, as he always had before, Dean went limp. The throbbing of his head brought tears to his eyes and a ringing to his ears — but it didn't take him out. He let the bunker, all two hundred some years of the Men of Letters, fill him up until he was overflowing. He couldn't feel the bone blade in his hand, couldn't see Emmay smiling at him from across the hall. He treaded water, tried to float. The headache built and built as Dean fought against the tide in his brain. 

Somewhere past the library door, Sam let out a choked out gasp. 

Dean let go.

*

Sam drummed his heels against the wall and wished the bunker wasn't so solidly built. The sound came out as a series of dull _thud_ s; he had no idea if Dean could even hear him.

Sometimes it seemed like he spend his entire life being choked by demons. 

"Well?" Crowley asked, his voice eerily level even as his hand convulsed around Sam's neck. "Do we have a deal, or don't we?" Sam barely managed more than a coughing squawk and a twitch of his head from side to side. Crowley frowned, loosening his grip just a touch, and Sam heaved in a breath. "You show me where I can find the information I need to defeat Abaddon," Crowley said, nice and slow like he expected Sam was hard of hearing. "And I'll pull the curse off your brother, and we'll all go our separate ways. Capiche?" 

Sam shook his head again, prying at Crowley's hand, trying to get his weight properly back on his feet. "I don't even know if we have that information. Dean's the walking card catalog, remember?" 

"Your brother's brain is so much jelly the minute he steps out of the range of those sigils," Crowley said. "Though I suppose I should thank you. It's a useful little squiggle. Reckon it sucked all the juice out of your little traps." He smiled, tightening his hand around Sam's throat again. "Now, let's try this again. You show me the information I need, and I make sure your brother gets to remember how to tie his own shoes when all this is over." 

"No deal." Sam's eyes went wide at the sound of Dean's voice, and he pulled harder against Crowley's wrist. Crowley snapped his head around in surprise. "Velcro's underrated, anyway." 

Crowley flicked out his hand, sending Dean flying back into one of the library stacks. Dean went down in a shower of hardcovers, and Crowley threw Sam after him almost casually. 

"Interesting," he said. "I was sure you'd be dead by now." 

Sam wasn't 100 percent sure Dean _wasn't_. He sure as hell looked like a corpse. From where he lay, sprawled over the pile of books, Sam could see that both his brother's pupils were blown wide, swallowing the green of his irises in black. The capillaries had given out as well, filling the whites with red and spilling bloody tears down both his cheeks. More blood ran from Dean's nose and his right ear. He looked like he should be lying in a puddle on the floor seizing, or at the very least unconscious. Not pulling himself up from under the pile of books and wiping stray drops of blood from their covers. 

"You can't kill me." There was something hollow under Dean's voice, something that echoed. Like beneath the facade of his brother was an enormous, empty cavern. Sam shivered. 

"Oh?" Crowley flicked his hand again, sending Dean slamming into one of the central tables. "Find some way to make yourself immortal, finally?" 

Dean slid off the table and landed on his feet. His arm hung at a bad angle, but he barely seemed to notice. "No," he said. "I can die. Just not by you." 

"Dean," Sam said. 

"Not now, Moose." Crowley sent more books flying from their shelves. Sam threw his arms over his head and winced under the barrage. They slammed into him, then circled up into the air and back, swiftly developing into a storm of paper and hard covers. "The adults are talking." 

Dean shot out a hand without looking at anything but Crowley, catching a phonebook-sized hardcover with crisp, perfect corners inches from Sam's face. He held it up as he walked towards Crowley, shifting his weight and walking through the flying books as though they were clearing a path for him. "This one here," he said. "Contains a three word exorcism. Zoroastrian, I believe. Highly effective." 

Crowley scowled, and the lamps on the table joined the building book tornado. Sam ducked under shards of Tiffany glass. Dean set the book he held gently on one of the newly empty shelves, then picked up a katana from its display rack. 

Oh, great. Sam winced as a two-inch shard of lamp sank into his forearm. Dean just had to call attention to all the _blades_ in the room, too. Not that he was getting hit with any of the debris. He didn't even seem to have noticed that Sam _was_. 

"This sword has been blessed by — well. Any number of holy orders, really. An experiment by Bernard Speck in 1926." Dean tested the blade with his thumb. "It's got a taste for demon blood. Won't kill you, but it's guaranteed to hurt a lot." 

Crowley backed up a step. Dean set the sword back down. 

"Alright, Deano, I'll play," Crowley said. "You got all this knowledge swimming around in your head, then. Why not use it? Why just show me the book, the sword?" 

Dean smiled. The blood from his eyes and nose had run into his mouth, tinting his teeth pink. Sam would be hard pressed to come up with any moment when Dean looked crazier, more terrifying than he did right now. "You're the King of Hell," he said, then shrugged. "Former. You were right, you know. Knowledge is intoxicating. The Men of Letters have always known it. Gathering it's our only goal." He'd made his way close enough now to grab Crowley by the lapels of his suit. Sam couldn't be sure from this angle, creeping along on the floor under the circling debris, but he thought Crowley actually looked _frightened_. "Just think of the things we could learn from you." 

"You think this is your brother, Sam?" Crowley yanked himself out of Dean's grip. The books sped up until they whirred. "A deal with me is the only way you're getting him back!" 

Sam shook his head. "Fix him anyway. Or I'll let him have you." 

"Doesn't work that way," said Dean. "This king was of the crossroads, first. Without a sealed deal, he's basically powerless." He grinned again. " _Fascinating._ " The sound he made next didn't even sound human. It scraped over Sam's skin, burned in the lacerations from Crowley's book-storm. Crowley writhed, letting out short, sharp keening sounds as his skin began to turn red. Thin tendrils of smoke seeped out from under his suit. The books in the air wavered. Sam felt sick. He wondered if this was what Dean had felt every time he had to watch Sam use his demon-blood powers. Everything about this was _wrong_. 

A flicker behind him dragged Sam's gaze away from Dean and Crowley. A woman in a suffragette skirt stood in the doorway to the library, her hands clenched at her sides. Her long sleeves dripped ectoplasm to the floor, and the skin over her wrists was dead and split wide. 

So. This was the infamous Emmay. What the hell was she doing _here?_

She looked from Dean to Sam, catching his eye, and the way her lips curled made Sam's heart freeze in his chest. Too many women he'd known had had that smile. His mother, in pictures. Jess. 

_Winchesters find a way_ , she said, and Sam didn't know how he could hear her over the sound of the books or the noises Dean made to torture Crowley. Sam frowned. 

"I — I don't —" 

_I was a Moore, first._ She looked at Dean again. _This is enough. He needs to remember._ And back at Sam. _It's not the Men of Letters he's meant to be protecting._

Sam's jaw clenched. He stood slowly, turning his shoulder into the swirling books and keeping his head low. He reached the shelf with the book Dean claimed contained the exorcism and picked it up. For a moment he thought to flip through it, find the three words, but cracking the book revealed it was written in some sort of ancient Arabic. Instead, he hefted it between his hands and crept closer. 

There wasn't much need for stealth. Dean and Crowley were both entirely occupied with each other, Dean hissing more of those strange, painful words, Crowley biting back a howl and losing his grip on the circling books. Several flung out of the storm, smacking into the walls hard enough to crack the tiles and snap the shelves, though none of them approached the two of them. Sam ducked low again, making his way out from under the storm, and swung the book in his hands at the side of Dean's head as hard as he dared. 

Dean staggered sideways into a pillar, then leaned into it, looking dazed. Crowley swayed on his feet and blinked owlishly at Sam. 

"You need a deal to fix him?" Sam asked. Crowley nodded. "Here's the deal. You fix him, and we won't use all the crappy, horrifying tricks the Men of Letters have collected to find you, capture you, and torture you all over again." 

Crowley's eyes were wild. "You call that a —" 

Dean started to straighten, radiating hatred and a kind of maniacal pleasure focused straight at Sam. He got out another scraping syllable, this one rattling and burning through Sam's nerves as well as Crowley's. Sam gathered his strength, moving through the pain with the ease borne from too many years of practice, and slammed the book into Dean's head again. It wasn't enough to drop him — might've been, if Sam weren't still feeling the last lingering effects of the demon tablet trials — but it bought Sam just a little more time. 

"No tracking me," Crowley gasped. Blisters were forming along knuckles and down his right cheek. "No 'curing' me, no capturing me. You leave me to take care of my business." 

"If you fix Dean," said Sam. 

" _Do we have a deal?_ " 

Sam yanked Crowley forward and kissed him. The circling books stopped and fell to the floor. Dean let out an abbreviated roar. Sam saw him staggering forward out of the corner of his eye, his face actually _dripping_ blood. When Sam pulled away again, Crowley nodded, and Dean crumpled like an empty sack. 

"Now," said Crowley, yanking his jacket straight and brushing dust from his arms. "If you could get the door? Your airlock is still, unfortunately, perfectly intact."

**Chapter Eight**

Sam found Charlie unconscious in the hallway around the corner from the bathroom, her taser on the floor next to her, the probes still stuck in the fabric of her shirt. She woke up when Sam tapped her cheek, bleary-eyed and fighting to find her feet.

"Crowley," she said. "He —"

"Yeah," said Sam. "It's taken care of." 

Cas was trussed up in the storage room that fronted the dungeon, locked into the chains they'd used on Crowley, with duct tape — not even torn all the way off the roll — across his mouth. He stared up at Sam but didn't say anything when the tape was removed. He didn't have to talk. Sam could see in his eyes that he blamed himself for what happened. 

_You fucked up_ , Sam wanted to say. _You're human. Welcome to the club._

Instead, he just repeated what he'd told Charlie: that it was all taken care of. 

"Kevin's in the bathroom," he said. "And Dean's in the library. They're both unconscious." 

"Wouldn't they be more comfortable in their beds?" 

Sam grimaced, then shrugged. "Yeah. Probably."

*

Dean felt dead.

His eyes were finally healing — he no longer looked in the mirror and saw a crossroads demon staring back at him — but his head still pounded constantly, his hearing hadn't come back fully in his right ear, and his left hand trembled at inopportune moments, no matter how hard he tried to stop it. 

"You should let me take you to the hospital," Sam told him the morning he managed to spill coffee down the front of his shirt. "That spell could have literally melted the right side of your brain." 

"I'm fine," Dean said. 

"You could have an aneurysm. It could blow and kill you at any moment." 

"I don't have an aneurysm."

"How do you know? I can't stitch up your brain, Dean." 

"The bunker took care of it." 

Sam stared at him silently long enough that Dean could practically see his fuse burning down. "You told me," he said, voice low and tight. "There was no healing spell." 

"I lied," Dean said. "But you already figured that out." 

" _Why_ , Dean? Why is it so important that I never know the whole truth?" 

Dean shrugged. He didn't have the energy to play this whole argument out again. "That's how you put stitches on a soul." 

Sam's mouth hung open. Dean was sure his mind was whirring, trying to formulate a comeback. Dean's own had finally started to quiet down now, but he remembered well enough what it was like, the wheels always turning. One of these days, it was going to give _Sam_ an aneurysm. 

Sam's mouth snapped shut again without a snappy comeback. Instead, he glared at Dean and stormed out of the kitchen. 

"Wow," said Kevin. "That was almost poetic." 

Dean hadn't even noticed he was there. Far cry from the time when he knew where every living thing in the bunker was at any given moment. 

"Don't you have a tablet to translate?" 

"I liked you better when your brain was in danger of shorting out." Kevin hopped down from the counter he was sitting on and walked out, coffee cradled in both hands. 

"Yeah," Dean told the empty air. "Me, too. "

*

Sam made his first trip into the vaults at the end of a week. It took that long before he deemed Dean mobile enough to guide him, and he knew that his brother would never let him go down there alone. Or even with Charlie and Cas along. As much as Dean had adopted them into the family, he still didn't quite trust them to keep Sam out of trouble without him. Sam wasn't sure Dean trusted _anyone_ that much, at least not since Bobby died. He sure as hell didn't trust Sam with his own well-being.

They took their time with it, pausing frequently for Dean to lean against the walls or doors in what he seemed to think was a casual, nonchalant sort of way, like they didn't all know he was still in pain. Sam was suitably impressed by the flying monkey, and he had to admit, if he'd seen anything even remotely resembling any of the specimens in the insect case anywhere but, well, _in an insect case_ , he'd probably have reached for the nearest large weapon, too. 

He didn't think the tailor's dummy looked anything like Slenderman. But then, he'd never shared Dean's particularly warped imagination. 

What Sam really wanted to see, and what Dean almost refused to show him, was the central room at the base of the vaults, where Emmay and the last victim of the curse — still nameless, the written records damaged or lost, and Dean's memory of the precise details faded to almost nothing — were buried. 

It was absolutely incredible, luminescent in every sense of the word, and Sam understood Dean's almost reverent silence when it came time to describe or explain it to anyone else. Cas immediately went to the walls, leaning in close to read the inscriptions, though he kept his hands carefully away from the fungus. Charlie stood in the center and turned in a slow circle, her head tilted back, her eyes enormous and awed, like this somehow was what finally brought the magic and majesty of the universe home to her. Dean stuck his hands in his pockets and watched them, a small smile on his lips. Sam stood next to him, almost shoulder to shoulder, holding up one of the lamps they'd brought with them, and tried to see the whole complex the way Dean did. 

The trouble was, with everything that had happened, Sam wasn't exactly sure what perspective that was. 

"Where's Emmay?" he asked finally, giving up on trying to guess if the curse had undermined Dean's sense of the bunker as "home", or if it increased it. Dean tipped his head up and pointed towards the waterfall with his chin. 

"Under there." 

Sam sighed. "It's going to be a bitch to get her out." 

Dean shook his head. "We can't salt and burn her." 

"She deserves to rest." 

"Not disagreeing," Dean said, and Sam heard the same faintly bitter, sardonic tone in his voice that he got when he talked about their own lives and struggles. "But she's powering this whole place. All these spells, everything that makes this bunker what it is. That's all Emmay." 

"Without her," Sam said. "There's no magic." He watched as Cas pulled a notepad out of his pocket and began sketching out sigils. Charlie had made her way to the water and was crouched at the edge, swirling the tip of her finger in it and watching as the movement sent out swirls of blue light. Magic had always been something terrible, in Sam's world. Magic meant evil. It meant danger. It meant death and pain and always being just a few steps shy of losing everything he'd ever worked for or ever loved. 

It had never meant wonder, the way it did to Charlie. Had never seemed natural, as it did for Cas. 

"We can't fight magic without magic," Dean said. "If we didn't have devil's traps and anti-possession tattoos and angel expulsion sigils, we'd've been even more screwed than we already are." 

Sam sighed. "Okay," he said. "We'll leave her." 

_Thank you._ Sam jumped, and was gratified to see Dean startle, too. Emmay took shape beside them, her posture all but matching theirs, and Sam realized with a faint smile that she was nearly as tall as Dean. Jess had been remarkably tall, too. _I rather like it here, now that it's no longer empty._

"They're not going to stay forever, you know," Dean said. "Well. Charlie definitely won't. And at some point, Cas is going to want to start chasing angels, again." 

Sam nodded. "And we should probably encourage Kevin to reenter the real world eventually." 

_But they'll come back,_ Emmay said. _The Men of Letters were never perfect. But they were — and are — my people, and I love them and what their works have wrought. I am pleased to see it continue and reshape itself into something of which we may once again be proud._

Dean dropped his head. It was hard to tell in the light of the lantern, but Sam thought he might be blushing. "We'll try, anyway." 

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "We always at least try."

*

When Sam was injured and Dean was hovering over him, they spent most of their time in Sam's room. When Dean's brain was falling apart and Sam was trying to not-hover-by-example, headquarters had been Dean's room. Now that both of them were making their way back out of recovery, they orbited each other like satellites, usually from what Dean liked to call the "situation room". Kevin kept to his little reading room off the library, and Cas had taken to joining him, looking through the Men of Letters' apparently impressive collection of angel lore while he worked out what to do about his brothers and sisters being trapped on Earth. They both seemed content to keep to their research, for the time being, and Dean was more than content to know that they were both safe and sound within the bunker's wards, so he didn't argue.

Sam preferred the desk against the wall in the situation room, where he'd sit and read up on sun worshippers or something equally useless. Dean took the map table, enjoying the way it made everything he did seem extra important. He had the chessboard out, arms folded on the table though he wasn't really looking at the pieces. It was Charlie's turn, anyway, and she was off at some Geeks-R-Us conference or something for the weekend. She'd only stuck around a little while, once she was sure that he and Sam would find their way back to alright, anxious, apparently, to get back to her "real life". 

"You mean hunting," Dean had said. Charlie agreed. 

"I know it scares you," she said. "But I can't live my life for you." 

The chess matches were her idea, a way to check in on the regular without Dean ending up like her nanny. She was winning their first game, but if she went the way Dean thought she was going to go next, he'd be able to turn it around in just a couple turns. 

Sam sighed and coughed gently into his hand, then rubbed it against his chest. "Stop it," he said. 

Dean tipped the black rook up onto one edge, then let it settle again on its square. "Stop what?" 

Sam looked up from his book. His lips were pressed into a thin line, the way they got when he decided Dean was Doing It Wrong. "I'm _fine_ , Dean." 

"Of course you are." 

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

Dean twirled the black queen, made her bow to her bishop. "That you're secretly dying," he said. "I've been waiting for you to notice." 

Sam rolled his eyes and went back to his book. Dean made up a forbidden love affair between the white and black pawns facing each other at the edge of the board. 

"Dude," Sam said. "Do you even know how to play that?" 

"Nah." Dean smirked. "I just like moving the little horsies around." He expected at least a huff at that, maybe a whole lecture on proper chess terminology, but when he looked up, Sam had gone back to his book. 

"If Charlie wins," Dean said. "I have to talk to you." 

That worked. Sam looked up, eyes round. "About what?" 

"Oh, you know." Dean picked up one of his captured pawns, angling it this way and that in the light. "The fact that I refuse to let you grow up and be your own person, the fact that I still see keeping you safe as the only important thing in my life even though I 'have a lot going for me.' The usual." 

Sam narrowed his eyes. "Are you fucking with me?" 

"A little," Dean admitted. "I think she's been reading self-help books." 

"What do you get if you win?" 

"Copies of her best lesbian porn." 

"You're a terrible person," Sam said. 

"Aw, Sam, that's not going to help me bolster my self-esteem at all." 

Sam pointedly went back to his book. 

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the healing spell," Dean said. 

"No. You're not." 

Dean groaned. "Okay, I'm not. But I'm trying to be." 

Sam stared at him, and for the life of him, Dean couldn't work out what he was thinking. Probably any number of things, all at once, so loud he had to work to follow any one of them. Dean had no idea how Sam did it. He wondered if he'd ever get up the guts to tell Sam how impressive it was. 

Sam closed his book and leaned his elbows on the desk. "You wanna go find a hunt?" 

Relief swept through Dean like a wave. "Yes," he said. "Yes I do."

*

It took three hunts. Three trips full of evil and bullets and salt and fire before Dean was sure Sam was all healed up. Before Dean had enough space between Then and Now to start to feel anything even barely resembling "normal." He wasn't actually sure anymore what "normal" was supposed to feel like. He didn't know if he ever had been. But on the drive back from a small time spirit hunt in Massachusetts, the sort of hunt they used to pull all the time yet never seemed to find anymore, not without angels, demons, or destiny getting wrapped around it, Dean finally found the footing he needed to unload. As he pulled over to the side of the road, a little scenic overlook in the Appalachians, he saw a moment of panic flicker over Sam's features. Actual panic, like Dean was about to ruin his life with a roadside confession.

. . . Okay, so maybe that had happened a time or two — dozen — before. 

"Relax." Dean flicked his eyes up in an abbreviated roll. "Just stretching my legs." 

"Beer break, you mean." Sam unfolded slowly from the passenger side, expression open but wary. 

"Sure, that too." Dean opened the back and pulled a couple bottles from the cooler. He popped the tops with his ring and offered one to Sam, all in a fluid, practiced movement, easy as breathing. He took a sip, looking out over the valley ahead of them: a mess of green, brown, and grey, nature and civilization all piled up on top of each other. He tried to picture it as it might have looked a hundred years ago, when Emmay and hers were travelling, crisscrossing the country looking for information and artifacts. 

Used to be, all he could imagine on a view like this was a world on fire. 

"Well?" Sam asked. Dean glanced over and saw his brother staring at him, not the view. Maybe that was why he liked this so much. It was the only time Dean was sure that Sam was watching. 

"Well what?" Sam narrowed his eyes. Dean laughed once into his beer. "I'm getting predictable in my old age, huh?" Sam just looked at him expectantly, beer full and sweating in his hand. Dean huffed, ran a hand over his head, and looked back out over the valley. "I was ready to let you go." 

Sam nodded once. Dean swallowed. 

"Christ, Sammy. I've never wanted to protect _anything_ like I wanted to protect that bunker. I was going to let you die. Let Crowley kill you. Hell, _I_ was ready to kill you at the end of it. It didn't even bother me." He swallowed again, chest tight, and it took another swig of his beer to fill the silence. 

Fucking _silence_. That wasn't in the script. 

"This is where you say 'it wasn't you, Dean.'"

"It _was_ you," Sam said, and Dean turned his head to stare at him head on. Sam didn't flinch, didn't look away. "It was exactly who you are. How you are. You protect. One thing. Obsessively, blinded to anything else. This time it was the bunker instead of me." 

Dean shook his head. "That's different." 

"It's not. I'm the same, Dean, remember? Hell, I started this whole thing back in Nebraska with LeGrange. And when — when I tried to stop — I tried to die instead of have to feel like that all over again." 

Dean stared at him, searching his face for any sign of — fuck. He didn't even know what he was looking for. A lie. A denial. A promise that everything would be fine, that they'd go home — to their secret magic bunker of arcane knowledge — and suddenly be fine, be happy and healthy and surrounded by friends, and not tripping over each other to die first. 

"That's fucked up, Sam." 

Sam's lips twitched up, and he raised his bottle at last. "Yeah, well, at least you're human. You went apeshit trying to protect a _building_." 

Dean laughed. "Fucker." He let out a long breath, feeling strangely lighter, and looked out over the valley. "Thanks, though." 

"For what?" 

"Not letting me put the bunker before you. That would've been it, Sam. I don't think I could have come back from that." 

Dean saw him shift in his periphery. Sam straightened, looking out instead of at Dean. "I let him go. I loosed the King of Hell back on the world. We were going to close Hell forever, and instead, there are angels and demons fighting fucking turf wars over humanity." Dean frowned, the familiar weight of the world settling back over his shoulders. "Sometimes I'm not sure if we really stopped the apocalypse at all," Sam said. "Maybe that's why Esther could see you. Because we're still playing into God's brilliant plan to end everything; all we did was reshape it. Make it worse." 

"Remind me not to give you beer again. You are a fucking maudlin drunk." Dean stared down at his bottle, empty too quickly as usual. "The Men of Letters knew about the Apocalypse. Knew the angel bloodlines, the Righteous Man seal shit, all of it. Even knew the Campbells were Lucifer carriers. That was part of what made them think they were better than hunters, because the Winchester line was all Michael. They knew _all of it._ "

"Did they have plans?" Sam asked, suddenly anxious, like the idea of Dean with leftover knowledge that Sam didn't have was unforgivable. 

"They were in favor of it." Dean chucked his empty bottle back into the backseat. He'd fucked up the planet enough, didn't need to add littering to his crimes. He looked back over at Sam and smirked at the gobsmacked look on his face. "World's still here, Sam. If angels and demons are still fucking shit up, that just means we're not done, yet." 

"Every time we save each other, we make it a little worse." 

"Then I guess we better stop needing saving." 

"I'm serious, Dean." 

Dean shrugged. "So am I. Every time one of us has to stop the other from sacrificing ourselves, we fuck it up a little more. We stop throwing ourselves on grenades, maybe we can turn that around." 

Sam looked at his feet. "I don't know how to do that." 

Dean sighed. He leaned down and pulled out another beer. "Yeah. Neither do I."

They sat there in silence for a long time, Dean doing his best to drink his beer slowly, Sam picking the label of his, shedding little bits of damp paper which mostly stuck to his fingers and his jeans. "So," Sam said. "Does this mean Charlie won?" 

Dean sighed. "I really wanted that porn." He glanced over, his mouth all set to smile, and saw Sam staring back at him, expression closed. The smile died before it found his lips. "What?" 

"I think —" He tipped his beer up, suddenly, chugging it down until his bottle was empty. Dean blinked, impressed. "I forgive you, Dean." 

Dean blinked again. "For what?" 

Sam shrugged, twisting to chuck his bottle into the car, and when he looked up, his expression seemed to be lit up from within. "I just forgive you." He walked around the back of the car and climbed back into the passenger seat without looking up again. Dean watched him move, baffled. 

"Uh. Thanks." 

Sam leaned across the seat, opening the driver's side door from the inside. "You're welcome." 

Getting behind the wheel felt more like coming home than anywhere else Dean had ever been. He started the car and just let it sink in, for a moment, the roar of his baby's engine, the warmth of his brother's presence. "You know I'm going to tease the hell out of you for that." 

Sam smiled. "I'll forgive you for that, too." 

Dean rocked his head back, then shook it. "Shit." 

And he drove. 

End


End file.
